Quarterback and Tight End Pricing In 2026 Auctions

.oembed-frame {width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;border:0;}

The quarterback and tight end positions in auctions allow for freedom and creativity in how you approach the position in your draft. Unlike running back and wide receiver ‐ where the pressure to start multiple players creates an entirely different market ‐ quarterbacks and tight ends are "onesie" positions, as they are sometimes known.

Sure, there are only a few elite tight ends and quarterbacks that everyone is chasing, like Brock Bowers and Josh Allen, but there is not the same pressure that builds from scarcity during the auction. Generally, managers feel as though if they lose out on Drake Maye or Jalen Hurts, they can still feel pretty good about pivoting to Dak Prescott or Trevor Lawrence.

The thinking at tight end is similar. To an even greater extent, it lends itself to streaming from the waiver wire during the year. So naturally, managers would rather spend more money to secure that last WR2 than save that money to upgrade from Lawrence to Jayden Daniels or Harold Fannin to Tyler Warren. This depresses prices and provides buying opportunities.

Let us look at the three typical strategies for landing your quarterback and tight end in auctions, and do it through the lens of real pricing from some recent auctions. We have five data points from five auctions spanning June, July, and early August.

Every auction is going to be different, but there are trends we can pull from these prices that tell us a fairly reliable range where we will be able to draft these players in our own leagues. Of course, we all play with different settings and salary caps, but for purposes of this article, we will talk about a $200 cap and mostly be dealing with typical starting lineups using three wide receivers and a flex.

Here is what I have found:

.oembed-frame {width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;border:0;}

I have never been a believer in going for the top quarterback or tight end (the Travis Kelce strategy, as it used to be known, hereafter the Brock Bowers strategy) because I don't tend to like my builds when I spend that much on the onesie positions. With that said, it can be done. In fact, the attitude I have about it is quite prevalent in the fantasy football world. As a result, Josh Allen has never been cheaper. Of the five auctions I tracked, Allen went for $18‐20 in all five. It is a tight grouping. Your home league may be different, but this relative value tells us something important ‐ Allen for 10% of your total cap is quite real. If you want to go for him, he has not been this cheap since his breakout.

Bowers is a different story. The top tight ends fell off in price as Travis Kelce fell from prominence, but now Bowers is commanding Kelce-esque spending, going for $35, $36, and $37 recently in expert auctions. That is a much bigger share of the cap and demands more careful spending elsewhere.

If you want to drop down to Trey McBride, he is still going to cost in the mid-$20s, and sometimes more. Colston Loveland is right behind him. Although Loveland can sometimes be stolen for less ($18 in a veteran draft during the Salary Cap Summit), you should prepare as though you will spend at least $21 or $22 for him.

The quarterbacks behind Allen are Lamar Jackson and Drake Maye. Although these two do not demand as much money, they are also seeing price drops that demonstrate the compounding effect of managers realizing how deep the position is. Maye went for $12 in the Huddle Expert Auction but also landed on my team for $6 in the recent King's Classic Auction. The $12 price seems about where he is settling in, however, so that feels like the right price if you are chasing the Patriots' signal-caller. Jackson is typically more expensive than Maye, so there are degrees to what you need to pay, but his price has also been fairly tightly grouped right around $14 to $16. I saw an outlier $10 price in one league, but if you want Jackson, you should plan to spend in the mid-teens.

What all of this means is that you can certainly build your team with these guys in mind; it simply makes your job more difficult at the other positions. If you want to do it, make sure you nominate your target before the other elite players have a chance to be put on the block. For example, if you want Loveland, you should find out quickly if you are going to land him, and you want to be bidding on him when Bowers and McBride are still on the board. It is much easier to get a price you like if people can shrug and try for one of the top two instead of fighting with you for Loveland.

Chasing the elite players at the position is not my preferred approach, but weird things happen in auctions, and I am always going to be listening for an outlier price that I should jump in on. I have been in drafts where Drake Maye ($6), Jalen Hurts ($5), and Jayden Daniels ($3) went for oddly low prices purely because the room was either out of money or did not want to spend on quarterback. It will not happen all that often, but be ready for it even if you are not chasing this tier of player.

.oembed-frame {width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;border:0;}

This is usually the approach I fall into in most of my auctions. If I spend wildly at running back or wide receiver and have to drop down to the bargain bin, I am OK with that. It is harder than it looks, however. It is easy to talk about guys we could have drafted late in our auctions when we look back on it, but was anyone talking about needing Juwan Johnson or Colby Parkinson last year? Or that Trevor Lawrence was a league winner? Nope. It is hard to nail those late-round guys. So I prefer to step up from the replacement-level players and spend a few bucks on the middle-tier guys.

The major advantage of auctions is that the opportunity cost to buy the mid-level players is not the same as it is in snake drafts. If you want to draft Tyler Warren this year in a serpentine format, you will have to take him in the fifth round to make sure you get him. At that point, you are missing out on guys like Bhayshul Tuten, Christian Watson, Jameson Williams and TreVeyon Henderson.

The story is the same at quarterback. Grabbing Jalen Hurts impacts my ability to grab that third wide receiver I really need, or my second running back. The opportunity cost is too high for me in snake drafts.

But not in auctions. It is so much easier to land Warren or Tucker Kraft and still win Christian Watson. That is the beauty of auctions.

If you want to accept that you will not have a top-three player at either of the onesie positions, you can still get impact players, oftentimes for half the cost, by targeting the middle tiers.

Kraft is a great example, as he sometimes goes for as little as $6-7 if he is called out after the money is thin. He has also gone for $13 and $9, and I would expect that range to be what you have to pay as his health continues to look good in camp. Warren is also going to be fairly steady in the $11-14 range, though he did spike to $22 in the King's Classic and was $16 in the Huddle Expert Auction.

There is opportunity here with Sam LaPorta and, to a lesser degree, Harold Fannin as well. Both guys are cheaper than Kraft and Warren, and because they are not heavily sought-after targets, they can sometimes slip into the later rounds of the auction and be weirdly cheap, like Fannin going for $3 in the Salary Cap Summit. But the $7 we saw recently in the Huddle Expert Auction is about right for him, possibly a few bucks less if you time it right.

Quarterback also has a middle tier of guys like Jayden Daniels (~$7-9), Jalen Hurts ($5-10) and Joe Burrow ($7-10). Timing is everything at quarterback, so if one of these guys is your target, make sure you are alert for the right deal or the right time to nominate one of them to get the best price.

What it comes down to is that if you can resist the temptation of attacking the higher-level guys, there is a good chance you can wade into the middle tiers and end up with a combination of Hurts-Fannin, Daniels-Warren or Burrow-Kraft and do it for around $15 to $17. That seems like a nice bet to make to avoid starting Jordan Love every week against your opponent running out Drake Maye. Spending a few extra bucks on the onesie positions to get into the middle tier seems like the best value for the dollars spent in your auctions.

.oembed-frame {width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;border:0;}

I don't think you should ever go into your auction with a plan to spend $1 on your quarterback or $3 on your tight end. It may turn out fine if you do that, but I believe we should be using that strategy only when we overspend at other positions and need to save money at the onesie spots.

If you are forced to go cheap, however, there are a lot of options (as we talked about at the start of this piece). In auctions, I am a huge advocate of nominating the guys you want early and seeing if you will land them. I don't think that applies here.

Instead, if you are trying to get a cheap quarterback or tight end, you should wait as long as you possibly can. The more money that is gone from the room, the more likely people will not care to bid on your guy since they don't have the cap dollars for it and they know there are other guys they can have. Why fight you for Bo Nix when they can go get Kyler Murray?

The goal when shopping the bargain bin is not to get only $1 players. I do not want to be starting C.J. Stroud or Sam Darnold when other managers have real top-six options to play against me. The goal is to spend a few bucks to get above the true $1 guys and hope to find lightning in a bottle.

The guys I am looking at for your quarterback spot are Dak Prescott, Trevor Lawrence, Bo Nix, Justin Herbert, Caleb Williams and Kyler Murray. While these guys can sometimes go above $3 (Williams is sometimes $5 or $6), as a general rule, it's easy to land two of them for $5 or less. Drafting two of them gives you a much better shot at hitting on a top-eight guy for negligible cap dollars.

At tight end, things can be a bit more difficult. You aren't going to be able to get most of the mid-tier guys for less than $6 unless you time it right, and most of the rest of the tight ends are not guys you want to go to war over. I think there is an exception with Isaiah Likely, as we can usually get him for $5 or less. He has an unknown upside ‐ that we want to have some of ‐ if the Giants unlock him. Otherwise, spending too much on Jake Ferguson, Dallas Goedert or Dalton Kincaid isn't the wisest plan. If you can get those guys for around $2‐3, then that is what we are after. Oddly, Travis Kelce fits the bill here this year as well. He will be boring but steady for just a couple bucks.

Beyond that, we all have our favorite late-round guys. If I am forced to get into the bargain bin, there are some upside guys who are a long shot to pay off but players we can take a chance on for $1 when we have spent elsewhere. Those guys are:

Brenton Strange
Juwan Johnson
Chig Okonkwo
A.J. Barner
Terrance Ferguson

Malik Willis
Baker Mayfield
Tyler Shough

Do your best not to get cornered into spending $2 for two quarterbacks or tight ends. If you have to, those are the bets I am making.

The pressure to attack quarterback and tight end is not there in auction rooms. This means that managers will find different ways to approach the positions. As a result, vigilant auction drafters can take advantage. The best value for your cap dollars has historically been in attacking the middle tiers, but with the drop in price at quarterback and the resurgence of elite tight ends like Bowers, there are some different ways to budget our money these days. Regardless of which one you pick, have a plan and execute it by chasing the guys who can help you carry out that goal. Happy bidding!

This article originally appeared on The Huddle: Quarterback and Tight End Pricing In 2026 Auctions