The corrected board ranks these four 11th through 14th, and only one of them is dead for the reason the board thinks. This league's own two seasons measure 4.9 ppg of defence spread and 3.9 at kicker — about 124 points — which makes one of these rosters defensible and the outside projection wrong about it. Between them they hold five of the league's 14 rostered backup quarterbacks.
The corrected post-draft board puts these four at the bottom. It is right about Octomore for the reason it gives, right about Regular Human Bartender for a reason it cannot see, roughly right about jzstephens by accident, and wrong about Calabash on a point where this league's own history contradicts the outside projection. That is a better hit rate than it sounds, and it is why "the board says" is a price rather than a verdict.
One structural note that binds them. Twenty-eight quarterbacks are rostered across fourteen teams and fourteen start, so 14 rostered quarterbacks sit on benches league-wide. These four teams hold five of them, plus a surplus defence — six of their twenty-four bench spots on players who cannot enter a lineup in a normal week.
VERIFIED: 1676 corrected and thirteenth, against sixth on the raw board. The distance between those two numbers is the most interesting disagreement in the league, and it is entirely about two picks: Brandon Aubrey at 103, at −100 the second-largest reach flag on the board and the largest on any kicker, and Seattle at 117, which projects 187, the highest defence projection anywhere.
The correction halves kicker and defence value because outside projections over-weight them. This league's own history does not agree with the direction of that correction. Pooled across 2024 and 2025, started weeks only, the spread from the first unit to the fourteenth is 4.9 ppg at defence and 3.9 at kicker — roughly 124 points across a season, and larger than outside proxies, because no outside feed prices the punt-return yards this scoring awards to defences at a receiver's rate. Aubrey is this league's measured second-best kicker (11.7 ppg, floor 7.6, 26 started weeks); Seattle its measured second-best defence (12.9, floor 7, 19 started weeks). Two caveats that are real and should stay attached: those are started weeks only, so a manager benching a bad matchup flatters the average, and n is 19 and 26.
What actually kills him has nothing to do with any of that. He rosters two running backs. A rookie and Tank Bigsby, against a mandatory running back slot for fourteen straight weeks. One hamstring and he cannot field a legal optimal lineup from his own roster. He also holds three quarterbacks — Maye 422, Love 401, Rodgers 321 — so two bench spots are spent on men who cannot score for him while his one irreplaceable slot runs two deep.
Projected finish 9th-13th, moderate confidence, and the interval is one injury wide. He is the most obvious trade partner in the league; somebody in this league is carrying six backs.
COACH PROFILE — Barrett Sloam. Nineteen years a special-teams coordinator, elevated in what the front office still describes as a clerical matter. Holds that the game is won on field position and has assembled the evidence to prove it. Signature failure — owns the second-best kicker and the second-best defence in the league and two running backs, and refers to this arrangement, without irony, as balance.
VERIFIED: roughly 1693 corrected, C-minus, from draft slot 1 — the best seat in a linear order, picking first in each of twelve live rounds. He kept only two (Henry 232, Nico Collins 214), which bought him more live picks than any other keeping team, and the first three were good: McConkey at 29, Zay Flowers at 43, Bucky Irving at 57. His live draft added +129 to his starting six, the most in the league.
And he did not leave the draft without a kicker, which an earlier version of this piece said he did. He traded for the pick that got him one: before the draft he sent his rounds five and fourteen to Bickering War Wrens for their rounds six and thirteen, and the round-thirteen pick became Tyler Bass at 176. He starts him. What it cost him was moving back a round at the top: the Wrens used the pick he sent them on Bucky Irving at 57. He has three backs — Dobbins, Mason, Henry — with Dobbins in a starting flex.
Here is the finding the board cannot produce. He owns both sides of the same argument. The case against Zay Flowers is Derrick Henry: over the last two years Flowers has 11 receptions inside the ten-yard line and Henry has 71 carries inside the ten. Regular Human Bartender starts both. The Ballers are split on Flowers — Andy carries the bull case at WR17 on the McBride touchdown-unlock precedent, Jason is the bear at 24 — so it is a split inside one show as well as across two, and he is long both halves of it. In a league that decides two results a week, that is not a hedge; it is a negative correlation located exactly where points are scored.
Projected finish 10th-13th, moderate confidence.
COACH PROFILE — Hollis Kemp. Coached competitive debate for two decades and can argue either side of any roster decision, including his own. Signature failure — traded his second-best running back for a man who kicks, defended it on field position, was challenged, then argued the opposing case so persuasively that the beat writer changed his story twice.
VERIFIED: 1680 corrected, B-minus, and the board's most flattering line in the whole draft: Dalton Kincaid at 137 (+33), Xavier Worthy at 151 (+24), Keenan Allen at 179 (+15), Alvin Kamara at 193 (+37). Four late value slips.
Slip measures the order a player went against his market rank, and market rank is a price, not a valuation. Every one of those four is a player the corpus has already priced down, which is precisely why they lasted. Worthy is the cleanest case: with Rashee Rice on the field across two years he produces 2.7 catches and about eight PPR points a game — and Rice is healthy and rostered elsewhere in this league.
The larger problem is the starting lineup, not the bench. Behind CeeDee Lamb, his two receiving-flex bodies are Marvin Harrison Jr. and Quentin Johnston, both of whom BDGE ranks below their ADP — Harrison at WR26 against a WR17 price, Johnston at 48 after opening the summer as a round-eight target. His RB1, Kyren Williams, is a three-way split — one analyst at 19 and refusing to roster him, his colleague at 12 calling him a guaranteed RB1, and the other show having stopped drafting him proactively. Bo Nix at 109 projects 405 behind Lamar's 428 and is one of the league's fourteen benched quarterbacks.
Projected finish 9th-12th, low-to-moderate confidence. Lamar and Lamb are a real spine and one receiver breaking moves him three places.
COACH PROFILE — Gil Thurber. Thirty years in retail liquidation. Will not pay retail for anything, including talent, and has a laminated card explaining why. Signature failure — has never once, in three decades, asked why the item was on sale.
VERIFIED: 1654 corrected, last, and the oldest roster in the league at 28.2 — nearly two years above the 26.4 league mean. Three of his four receivers are 30, 32 and 33; the fourth is an unproven rookie.
The pick everyone will bring up is Fernando Mendoza at 160: a rookie quarterback at −247 VOR, the worst pick in the draft by a factor of two, sitting behind Dak Prescott's 421 in a one-quarterback league. It is not why he finishes last. It cost him one bench spot.
He finishes last because his projected lineup asks Terry McLaurin and Mike Evans to fill both receiving-flex seats. McLaurin is a live fade on a line that dropped after a tackle's tricep tear. Evans is the cleanest cross-show disagreement in the league: the Ballers are mixed and getting colder — a great red-zone fit with Purdy, but "thirty-three going on seven hundred," brittle soft tissue and a quad already — while BDGE calls an ADP in the eighties patently absurd and has him plus-23 against consensus. One of those two shows is going to be wrong about Octomore's season, and there is no third opinion that resolves it.
Travis Kelce at 174 is the biggest value flag on the board, and it is measured against a slot he does not have; the read on him is that 41% of his routes are now old-guy routes. He is a fine bench body and not a reason to feel good. Tyler Warren is the keeper worth defending, and both shows love him for tight-end-slot reasons this league does not supply. Cam Skattebo is the real buy: nine of nine goal-line carries and 23 of 26 red-zone carries across eight healthy weeks last year.
Projected finish 11th-14th, and it is the only bottom-end projection in this piece I would defend at the bottom.
COACH PROFILE — Prentiss Voyles. Was once on a staff with a man who had met Marchibroda, and will tell you. Philosophy: veteran leadership, applied until the locker room qualifies for a group discount. Signature failure — the only young man he has ever trusted was a rookie quarterback he took in the twelfth round, behind a starter who cannot be displaced, because "the arm reminded me of somebody," and he has declined every opportunity to say of whom.