What’s up auctioneers! I’ve been behind on articles because I am a teacher, but now that summer is here, I can mock around the clock.
I’ve also been poring over last year’s auction data and comparing it to how players actually ended up performing in fantasy. I came across something stark… something fascinating. Hold on, where did I put it… Oh yes, here it is:
2026 Fantasy Football Auction Advice:
STOP TAKING TOP-15 RANKED PLAYERS!
If you’ve ever done an auction or were in possession of a working brain you know that those top players command a hefty price. It’s a bigger hit to your team construction than in snake draft. Allow me to explain.
In snake drafta, if you take the top-ranked player with the #1 pick, you have gotten a fair exchange rate: Your top pick for the projected top-ranked player. But, in auctions, the top-ranked players almost always goes for above projected value. For example, right now Bijan Robinson is the top taken player according to Yahoo’s mock auction data. He is projected to have a value of $62, meaning Yahoo thinks $62 is a spot-on price for what his stats are projected to be. But Bijan is going for an average auction value of $71.4. That’s over 15% higher than his projection!
That means, to have a fair return for what you will, on average, pay to roster Bijan, it’s not good enough for him to finish as the top fantasy player. No, he has to finish as the top player AND do 15% better than everybody thinks he is going to do. That’s what mathematicians call, “hella stupid.”
Scrutinizing this, I decided to compare the fantasy stats of top players, at the end of the year, to their average auction values at the beginning. This confirmed the common sense stated above: Players that generate too much bidding over their projections end up as really bad values.
Let me show you the numbers. Here are the top 15 ranked players during the 2025 preseason, their average auction values, and the fantasy points they ended up averaging, per game (Half-PPR):
Compare This to Players Ranked 16-30
Note the average auction value of these 15 players ended up at $55. Also note that they averaged 15.1 half-ppr points per games in which they played.
Next, I compared these values to those from players ranked 16-30 in the 2025 fantasy football preseason. Here are the two tables, side-by-side:
Compare those averages:
Average resources spent for a top-15 ranked player: $55
Average resources spent for a player ranked 16-30: $29
End-of-Year average fantasy points per game for a top-15 ranked player: 15.1
End-of-Year average fantasy points per game for a player ranked 16-30: 13.1
So, for a top 15 player, managers gave up a premium of almost 90% more auction value than for a player ranked 16-30. But this netted them only a fantasy points return of 16%.
It’s not worth a 90% jump in cost for a 16% boost in fantasy production.
To bring the whole thing full-picture, take a look at the average auction values vs. projected values for this year’s 2026 top 30 players:
The Fantasy Football Auction Pattern Continues
It’s the 2025 trend all over again: Paying a premium for a top-15 player vs. paying about projected value for taking a player ranked 16-30. Note that the 17th-ranked player is the first in the entire field to go for an AAV less than their projected value.
So, stop picking top-15 ranked players in your auctions!
Bonus 2026 Fantasy Football Auction Advice
While laying out these tables for this article, I noticed ANOTHER THING!
The average auction cost for the top 15 players in 2025 was $55. The average auction cost for the top 15 players in 2026 is $57.1. I have a degree in Smartness, so I carefully calculated and came to a shocking conclusion:
57.1 is greater than 55.
The rumors are true!
So, people are currently bidding more for the top 15 players in 2026. $35.5 more is getting sucked out of the total pool of everyone’s money ($200 budget).
But, the average auction cost for a player ranked 16-30 was $29 in 2025, yet it is $33.55 for 2026. So those players are sucking even more money out of the pool! $68.25, to be exact.
In all, the top 30 players are demanding an additional $103.75 compared to last year.
So, what does that mean, and how can you use it to crush your 2026 fantasy football auction draft?
I’ve studied and documented the tendency for auction markets to “crash.” At some point in the draft, if players are going for higher than proj, there is an extreme market correction. Players, most commonly wide receivers, start going for way less than their projected values, often half-off. Because of this increase in what the top 30 players command at the salary cap table, this crash should come sooner than last year.
Conclusion: While I am attempting to cancel the strategy of drafting a top-15 ranked players, I am super-boosting the strategy of leaving room in your wide receiver starting slots, pay up for other positions, and count on getting some great WR2s for big bargains. Note that the Yahoo top 30 I posted only contains 12 WRs. That means there’s plenty of room to play the waiting game and snag an amazing deal on a top 20 WR in terms of total points last year. Players on this list going outside the top 30 overall: Tee Higgins (12th in total WR points last year), Zay Flowers (7th), Tetairoa McMillan (15th), Davante Adams (8th), Jameson Williams (10th), Courtland Sutton (11th), Michael Wilson (13th), Emeka Egbuka (19th) or even that chuckleberry, Rashee Rice (16th. That was the day he got out of jail, June 16th). All of those players are going for an average auction value less than their projection, and at least one of them should go for a ton less in your auctions. So stick that info in your pipe and clog it!
I’ll be writing a ton more auction content, this summer, and will put it all in Football Absurdity’s Fantasy Football Auction category. So, check back often and, until next time, keep on mocking in the free world!
For live auction discussion and analysis, mock with us on the weekends and/or follow the mock on our youtube channel.
