Kalshi's Offensive Rookie of the Year market has spent the last twelve days taking away the two easiest arguments on its board. The No. 1 overall pick is now officially a backup. Klint Kubiak named Kirk Cousins the Raiders' Week 1 starter on Wednesday, September 2, and Fernando Mendoza trades at 11 cents bid, 12 asked. The favorite, Cardinals running back Jeremiyah Love, is "about 50/50" for his own opener per NFL Network's Mike Garafolo, and he trades at 15 bid, 16 asked. Nobody replaced them. The top five contracts now sit inside a four-cent band, and the busiest one over the last 24 hours is a second-round receiver who was not listed until August 12. This is what a wide-open award looks like on an exchange, and the useful thing about this page is that it wrote down, on August 23, exactly which events would settle the argument. Two of the four have resolved outright and a third is half-answered. The scorecard is below, after the tape.
What changed (Sep 14, 12:24 AM ET)Kalshi's lead price on this board moved 14¢ → 26¢ (+12¢) since our last read. The panel's verdict below was written before this move and stands as published until the refresh lands.
The Quick Answer
Kalshi's top five NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year contracts are Jeremiyah Love (15/16¢), Jadarian Price (13/14¢), De'Zhaun Stribling (12/14¢), Carnell Tate (11/12¢) and Fernando Mendoza (11/12¢), a four-cent spread from first to fifth. Since August 23, Mendoza has lost three cents to the Cousins decision, Stribling has gained four and a half on a "major role" in San Francisco, and Love's book has not moved on a 50-50 Week 1 report at all: 15 bid, 16 asked before it and after it. The eight-model panel's August 23 read, Price first at 16.5%, Mendoza the biggest fade at 9.0%, has since seen two of its four named checkpoints resolve, and both broke the way it priced. The full board, the tape behind each move, and the scored checklist are below.
Prices are Kalshi bid and ask captured at 14:17 UTC (10:17 a.m. ET) on September 4, 2026, with midpoints used for the table. The panel numbers are frozen from the August 23 run and are labeled that way throughout; the panel has not been re-scored on the September tape. At a 13.5-cent midpoint, Price is about 7.4 in decimal odds. Love's 15.5 cents is about 6.5.
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What Changed Since August 23
Three person-driven stories and one flow story, each datable to the hour.
Mendoza was named the backup, and the market had already priced it. Kubiak announced Cousins as the Week 1 starter against Miami on Wednesday, September 2. His explanation, via NFL.com: "He played really good football. I'm really happy with all three of our quarterbacks. Kirk's had a really good offseason, very good camp and he's earned it." Asked when the rookie might play, he gave the answer that matters for this market: "Let's work to Miami first." General manager John Spytek told ESPN that Mendoza's "time is coming, but he's got to earn it every day." Mendoza finished the preseason 18 of 31 for 181 yards, one touchdown and one pick-six across three games. The tape is the interesting part. Mendoza's contract closed the August 30 session at 13 cents and slid to 11 by the close on Tuesday, September 1, with the day's low print at 7 cents on a session of just 246 contracts, all before Kubiak said a word. On announcement day itself the contract did not move: 2,345 contracts changed hands, every one at 11 cents, every one a buyer. Thursday brought 12,358 more, all but 10 of them buyers, 8,202 of them in the 9 a.m. ET hour, and they lifted the offer to 12. The decision, in other words, was in the price by Tuesday; what came after the announcement was people buying the dip.
Love is a coin flip for Week 1, and buyers bought through it. Love's high ankle sprain dates to the Cardinals' preseason opener on August 13, when he had 14 touches before leaving. Garafolo's "about 50/50" report landed Tuesday, September 1, a day after Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur told reporters that Love "took another step yesterday and he'll take another step today" and is "progressing really well toward playing in Week 1." Arizona's first injury report is due September 9 and the opener, at the Chargers, is Sunday, September 13. The contract's reaction was the opposite of Tyson's in August: Love's line traded 14,624 contracts on Wednesday, September 2, the heaviest day on his row in my 16-day candle pull, and 14,596 of those contracts were buyers paying 16 cents. His book closed 15 bid, 16 asked on every day from August 26 through September 3, the day before Garafolo, the day of, and the two days after; the only cent that has come off is measured against this page's August 23 snapshot, when the midpoint was 16.5. A market that prices a 50-50 opener at zero cents of change is pricing the season, not the game, and the reason it can afford to is in the Love section below.
Stribling got a role, then got a sweep. Brock Purdy said this week that Stribling is "going to be a big part of our offense this year," two weeks after The Athletic's Matt Barrows reported he was "going to have a major role" in Week 1 against the Rams. The price followed the reporting up from an 8.5-cent midpoint on August 23 to 12 by the end of August, and then on Thursday, September 3 at 12:57 p.m. ET, two prints totaling 13,613 contracts hit the 14-cent offer inside the same minute. That one minute is 89 percent of his 15,359-contract 24-hour volume, which is the largest on the board. His open interest is up from 62,000 to 110,000 in twelve days.
And the flow underneath moved two cheap rows. KC Concepcion (5/6¢) and Mike Washington Jr. (2/3¢) absorbed 22,500 and 33,000 contracts respectively over Wednesday and Thursday, nearly all of it buying (898 Concepcion contracts sold at 5 cents on Thursday are the only exception), much of it in round blocks: 6,243 and then 8,676 contracts on Washington's line inside two minutes on Wednesday afternoon, then a 9,000-lot on Washington at 9:58 p.m. ET Thursday and a 10,000-lot on Concepcion two minutes later. Neither price changed. Washington's midpoint is 2.5 cents against the 5.5 this page quoted in August, when his book was 3 bid, 8 asked; the spread has closed to a penny and the price settled at the bottom of it.
Jordyn Tyson, whose two-month hamstring timeline started the August version of this page, now shows no bid at all: 0 bid, 1 asked, on 3,054 contracts in the last day. He is the board's reminder of what a real disqualification looks like, and neither Mendoza's nor Love's line has done anything like it.
The Board
The narrow view, sorted by the panel's August number, with the August 23 midpoint next to the current one so the moves are visible. Full per-seat detail follows.
| Rookie | Draft slot | Kalshi now | Aug 23 | AI Blend (Aug 23 run) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jadarian Price (RB, SEA) | Rd 1, Pk 32 | 13.5¢ | 12.5 | 16.5% |
| Jeremiyah Love (RB, ARI) | Rd 1, Pk 3 | 15.5¢ | 16.5 | 14.0% |
| De'Zhaun Stribling (WR, SF) | Rd 2, Pk 33 | 13.0¢ | 8.5 | 11.7% |
| Carnell Tate (WR, TEN) | Rd 1, Pk 4 | 11.5¢ | 12.0 | 11.0% |
| Fernando Mendoza (QB, LV) | Rd 1, Pk 1 | 11.5¢ | 14.5 | 9.0% |
| Any Unlisted Rookie (The Field) | — | — | — | 6.0% |
| Cyrus Allen (WR, KC) | Rd 5, Pk 176 | 1.5¢ | 2.5 | 5.0% |
| KC Concepcion (WR, CLE) | Rd 1, Pk 24 | 5.5¢ | 5.5 | 4.0% |
| Ty Simpson (QB, LAR) | Rd 1, Pk 13 | 1.5¢ | 1.5 | 3.7% |
| Makai Lemon (WR, PHI) | Rd 1, Pk 20 | 4.5¢ | 5.5 | 2.5% |
| Omar Cooper Jr. (WR, NYJ) | Rd 1, Pk 30 | 1.5¢ | 1.5 | 2.3% |
| Ja'Kobi Lane (WR, BAL) | Rd 3, Pk 80 | 4.5¢ | 5.0 | 2.2% |
| Jordyn Tyson (WR, NO) | Rd 1, Pk 8 | 0.5¢ | 1.5 | 2.0% |
| Mike Washington Jr. (RB, LV) | Rd 4, Pk 122 | 2.5¢ | 5.5 | 1.5% |
| Denzel Boston (WR, CLE) | Rd 2, Pk 39 | 2.5¢ | 3.5 | 1.0% |
| Zachariah Branch (WR, ATL) | Rd 3, Pk 79 | 0.5¢ | 1.5 | 1.0% |
| Jonah Coleman (RB, DEN) | Rd 4, Pk 108 | 1.5¢ | 1.5 | 1.0% |
| Germie Bernard (WR, PIT) | Rd 2, Pk 47 | 0.5¢ | 0.5 | 1.0% |
| Kenyon Sadiq (TE, NYJ) | Rd 1, Pk 16 | 1.5¢ | 1.5 | 0.9% |
| Carson Beck (QB, ARI) | Rd 3, Pk 65 | 4.5¢ | 4.5 | 0.8% |
| Drew Allar (QB, PIT) | Rd 3, Pk 76 | 1.5¢ | 1.5 | 0.7% |
| Elijah Sarratt (WR, BAL) | Rd 4, Pk 115 | 0.5¢ | 1.5 | 0.5% |
| Eli Stowers (TE, PHI) | Rd 2, Pk 54 | 0.5¢ | 0.5 | 0.3% |
| Chris Bell (WR, MIA) | Rd 3, Pk 94 | 1.5¢ | 1.5 | 0.2% |
| Haynes King (QB, CAR) | Undrafted | 0.5¢ | 0.5 | 0.2% |
| Garrett Nussmeier (QB, KC) | Rd 7, Pk 249 | 0.5¢ | 0.5 | 0.2% |
| Chris Brazzell II (WR, CAR) | Rd 3, Pk 83 | 0.5¢ | 0.5 | 0.1% |
Blend is the seat median of eight models' revised estimates from the August 23 run. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. The Tie/Co-Winners contract (0/1¢) sits outside the panel's partition. "Kalshi now" is the bid-ask midpoint; a 0-bid, 1-ask book shows as 0.5¢.
The row worth staring at is not the one that moved most. It is Price's, which barely moved at all and now carries 331,650 contracts of open interest, more than double any other name on the board and more than twice the 156,107 on the favorite. Of the seven rows I pulled daily candles for, the single largest day was Price's Monday, August 24: 200,805 contracts, the day after the panel's read went up. Whoever built that position did it at 12 and 13 cents and has watched both of the panel's resolved checkpoints break their way since.
More live boards from the same panel: NFL MVP — Josh Allen led at 11¢ · Defensive Rookie of the Year — Rueben Bain Jr. 19¢, David Bailey 17¢ · every NFL award race in one hub. Those prices were fetched August 23, 2026.
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Every Seat's Number
The per-model split after the August 23 revision round, for the top of the board, reproduced exactly as it was generated. On a phone this table scrolls sideways; the board above carries the headline numbers.
| Rookie | ChatGPT | Claude Fable | Claude Opus | Claude Sonnet | Gemini 3.1 Pro | GLM 5.2 | Kimi K3 | DeepSeek V4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jadarian Price | 15.0 | 16.9 | 14.5 | 15.5 | 17.5 | 17.0 | 16.0 | 16.9 |
| Jeremiyah Love | 13.0 | 13.9 | 16.0 | 17.5 | 12.5 | 14.5 | 14.0 | 13.5 |
| De'Zhaun Stribling | 12.3 | 12.0 | 8.5 | 13.0 | 11.5 | 10.0 | 13.0 | 11.0 |
| Carnell Tate | 10.5 | 11.0 | 18.0 | 13.0 | 11.0 | 11.0 | 11.0 | 10.5 |
| Fernando Mendoza | 8.0 | 8.0 | 11.0 | 9.0 | 9.0 | 9.0 | 8.0 | 9.0 |
| Any Unlisted Rookie | 6.0 | 5.6 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 6.5 | 6.5 | 5.0 | 7.5 |
| Cyrus Allen | 5.5 | 4.5 | 1.8 | 4.9 | 4.5 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 |
Every seat on this panel is graded against real market settlements — records as of the August 23 run: Claude Fable 82% on 616 graded calls · Claude Opus 83% on 686 graded calls · Claude Sonnet 81% on 664 graded calls · GPT 84% on 5,836 graded calls · Gemini 86% on 4,570 graded calls · GLM 81% on 2,465 graded calls · Kimi 82% on 2,442 graded calls · DeepSeek 80% on 2,490 graded calls. Recomputed daily; the full scoreboard is public.
Model estimates generated August 23, 2026, price-blind from live fetched data. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial or trading advice. Models are frequently wrong; the market price reflects real traders' money. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange; 18+, availability varies by state.
Every number in this piece lands in our backtest ledger the day it is generated and gets graded against the AP's real announcement on the public model verdict scoreboard.
What the September tape has done is pull the market toward those August numbers rather than away from them. Price's gap has narrowed from four points to three. Stribling's premium, the panel's most striking call in August, has closed almost entirely: 11.7% against 13 cents now. Mendoza's fade has narrowed from five and a half points to two and a half. Mendoza still carries the widest market-over-panel gap in the top five even after the Cousins news, two and a half points, and the books are wider still. Love's gap is smaller, a point and a half, but it is the one the August reasoning explains least well, and the market has a specific reason for it, which comes next.
Jeremiyah Love, Arizona Cardinals: The Favorite Is A Coin Flip For The Opener
Love is the No. 3 pick, the market's favorite at 15/16 cents, and the panel's second choice at 14.0% in August. He is also the only contract in the top five whose Week 1 status is an open question, and the market's decision not to move on that question at all is the most informative price on the board.
The injury is a high ankle sprain from the preseason opener on August 13, where he had 11 carries for 58 yards and three catches for 14 before leaving. LaFleur's "progressing really well toward playing in Week 1" on August 31 is the team's position; Garafolo's 50-50 the next day is the only availability number anyone has put on it. What the market is weighing against that is the backfield he returns to. James Conner, the veteran who would have split Love's snaps, went on injured reserve with a designation to return on August 30 and must miss at least four games. That removes the snap-split risk this page named in August as the thing that "caps him where the ankle already has." The competition for touches in September is Tyler Allgeier, a free-agent signing on a two-year, $12.25 million deal, which is a backup's contract.
So the two Week 1 outcomes look like this. Love plays and is the lead back on a team whose veteran is on IR, and 16 cents is a low number for a No. 3 pick with that role. Love sits a game or two, Allgeier carries the load, and Love returns to the same vacancy in Week 3 with 15 games left. Neither branch resembles Tyson's, whose two-month absence took him to a no-bid book. Wednesday's 14,596 contracts of buying at 16 cents is the market saying the second branch is survivable. The August panel had Love at 14.0%, and the one seat whose Love reasoning this page published cut him for "a high ankle sprain entering a crowded backfield"; the backfield is no longer crowded. If this page re-scored today, the honest expectation is that Love's number would move up, not down, and the frozen 14.0% should be read with that in mind.
The Cardinals' first injury report of the season is due September 9, the same night Price takes his first NFL carries in Seattle. Those two are the scheduled events most likely to move this board before the weekend.
Jadarian Price, Seattle Seahawks: The Panel's Favorite Got Its Mechanism
Price is the 32nd pick, the last one of the first round, and he was the panel's top contract on six of eight seats in August. The case was never about talent. It was about a vacancy with a rulebook attached, and on August 30 the rulebook kicked in.
Start with who is not in the Seattle backfield. Kenneth Walker III, the Super Bowl LX MVP, left in free agency for Kansas City on a three-year deal worth up to $45 million after the Seahawks declined to franchise him. That left Zach Charbonnet as the incumbent, and Seattle placed Charbonnet on the physically-unable-to-perform list before camp, where he has been working back from an ACL tear suffered in January's Divisional Round win over San Francisco, with surgery in February.
Charbonnet is the player Price would have had to beat: last season he ran for 730 yards on 184 carries and led the team with 12 rushing touchdowns, the first Seahawk with double-digit rushing scores since Marshawn Lynch in 2014. The rule the panel kept citing in August was the one that gives the vacancy a floor: a player still on PUP when rosters cut to 53 must miss a minimum of four games. On August 30 the Seahawks moved Charbonnet to reserve/PUP as they cut to 53, and he "will miss at least four games." Seattle added Emanuel Wilson and drafted Price; that is the backfield the defending champions take into Wednesday, September 9 against New England.
"Price is a first-round RB whose incumbent tore an ACL in January … the exact injury-inheritance cause the card demands for non-top-10 winners." (Kimi K3, August 23 run)
That phrase, injury-inheritance, is doing specific work. Seven winners since 2000 were drafted outside the first round: Mike Anderson at 189, Dak Prescott at 135, Alvin Kamara at 67, Eddie Lacy at 61, Anquan Boldin at 54, Clinton Portis at 51 and Anthony Thomas at 38. All seven are pre-2018, and the pattern the panel was asked to test is that each one arrived at a full-time role early rather than out-producing a healthy starter. For Price, that opening is now a roster designation with a four-game minimum attached, not a projection.
Price himself missed part of camp with upper-leg soreness before returning in mid-August. Quarterback Sam Darnold called him "a special player" after the joint practice with Tennessee, where he showed an over-the-shoulder catch for a long gain and a long run. The market's response to the August 30 designation has been steady rather than dramatic: 13 bid, 14 asked at every daily close since August 28, small lots, almost all of them buyers. The book has not budged while another 36,900 contracts of open interest piled in behind it, from 294,791 at the August 24 close to 331,650 now. That is accumulation, not a position being unwound. Price also gets the first live data on this entire board: Seattle hosts New England on Wednesday, September 9, one night before any other contract here plays.
De'Zhaun Stribling, San Francisco 49ers: The Contract That Caught Up
On August 23 you could buy this at 8.5 cents against an 11.7% panel blend, the second-widest premium on the board. That gap is gone. Stribling trades 12 bid, 14 asked, and the reason is the same mechanism as Price's at a different position, now confirmed by the quarterback.
San Francisco general manager John Lynch announced that Ricky Pearsall will miss the entire 2026 season after knee surgery on a PCL injury dating to last season. Stribling caught 11 of 13 targets for 109 yards across two exhibition games, picked up a shoulder injury in the preseason win over the Chargers, sat the preseason finale, and was described by The Athletic's Matt Barrows as the starter in three-receiver sets. Purdy's line this week, "He's going to be a big part of our offense this year, so I'm excited to see him play," is as close as a starting quarterback gets to naming a starter.
Seven of the eight August seats put him above his August price, and the market has now agreed with them. The dissent is still worth more than the consensus, because it is the only seat that read the room list instead of the headline:
"I also cut Stribling to 8.5, below every forecaster, on a card fact none of them cited: San Francisco's listed WR room is Mike Evans, Brandon Aiyuk, Deebo Samuel and Demarcus Robinson. Pearsall's absence promotes a second-rounder into a crowded veteran room, not into a target monopoly." (Claude Opus, August 23 run)
That room was real on August 23, and it has thinned since. The 49ers' initial 53-man roster on August 30 lists six receivers: Evans, Samuel, Robinson, Stribling, Jordan Watkins and Jacob Cowing. Brandon Aiyuk is not on it. Samuel was signed for a second stint specifically to cover the Pearsall loss, so the difference between a vacancy and a promotion is still the whole question on this contract; what has changed is that the veteran room Opus pointed at is one name shorter and the market has moved from his number to the panel median's. Stribling gets the first data point on any 49ers contract when San Francisco opens against the Rams on Thursday, September 10 at 8:35 p.m. ET, Friday morning local time in Melbourne, one night after Price's opener. Thursday's 13,613-contract minute at 14 cents was somebody deciding not to wait for it.
Fernando Mendoza, Las Vegas Raiders: From Favorite To Backup
The No. 1 overall pick was the panel's biggest fade in August, 9.0% against 14.5 cents, with every seat between 8 and 11. The market has since taken three cents off him, and Kubiak has now said out loud what the panel priced.
Las Vegas signed Cousins to a five-year, $172 million contract this offseason, and the plan, per ESPN's reporting, was to let the rookie sit and develop. Mendoza's preseason numbers were the kind that make a coach comfortable with that plan: 18 of 31, 181 yards, one touchdown, one pick-six. The Raiders open against Miami on Sunday, September 13, and Kubiak's "Let's work to Miami first" is the only timeline anyone has offered for the rookie.
Quarterbacks have won 10 of the last 20 of these awards, which is why nobody zeroed him out. But every one of those quarterbacks started early. What the panel was pricing in August, and what the market is pricing now, is not Mendoza's ability; it is the number of games he is likely to have.
"Mendoza is priced as a midseason-takeover story only." (Claude Fable, August 23 run)
At 11/12 cents the contract now costs the same as Tate's, and the two are opposite bets. Tate is the No. 4 pick running as Tennessee's top downfield receiver; he missed Tuesday's practice with what Robert Saleh called stiffness, and RotoWire's September 2 note says nothing reported puts his Week 1 status against the Jets in danger. Mendoza is the higher-ceiling player who does not take a snap until a 38-year-old quarterback on a $172 million contract loses his job. Thursday's buyers, 12,348 contracts at 11 and 12 cents, are betting on that happening early enough to matter, on a schedule with no bye until Week 13. Ty Simpson, the No. 13 pick, remains the same structure at about an eighth of the price: 1/2 cents behind Matthew Stafford in Los Angeles, with the panel's 3.7% still more than double his midpoint and, quietly, the eighth-largest open interest on the board at 88,709 contracts.
Where The Panel Changed Its Mind (August 23 Run)
After round one on August 23, each seat read the other seven's anonymized numbers and reasoning and could revise with a stated reason. Five of the eight seats raised their Price number, two of them by more than six points.
Fable came in with Price at 10.0 and left at 16.9, the biggest move any seat made toward him:
"That leaves Jadarian Price as the cleanest profile on the board: first-round RB, active as of 8/23, the incumbent coming off a January ACL with a four-game PUP minimum if he is still on the list at cutdowns, and RB is the modal winning position all-time." (Claude Fable, raising Price from 10.0 to 16.9)
The conditional in that sentence, "if he is still on the list at cutdowns," is the one that resolved on August 30.
Gemini moved the other way on Love, cutting him from 20.0 to 12.5, the largest single reduction of the round, after the group's reading of Arizona's backfield:
"Jeremiyah Love (#3) suffered a high ankle sprain entering a crowded backfield." (Gemini 3.1 Pro, cutting Love from 20.0 to 12.5)
Half of that sentence has aged well and half has not. The ankle is still the story; the crowded backfield ended when Conner went on IR.
And one seat refused to move where everyone else had. Opus finished with Carnell Tate at 18.0, higher than any other seat put any player, and said exactly why:
"That leaves Tate as my leader at 18, which is where I most disagree with the group, all of whom had him third or fourth. The evidence against Tate is the weakest on the board: one quiet joint practice, zero catches on three targets in an exhibition, and 'stiffness' he already practiced through. Against that, he is a #4 pick, healthy, starting, in a room whose other members are Wan'Dale Robinson, Chimere Dike, Elic Ayomanor and K.J. Osborn — no alpha." (Claude Opus)
That is still the honest split on this board, and the September tape has not touched it: Tate's line has been the quietest of the top five, 4,355 contracts in three days, almost all of it at 12 cents. Six seats thought the top-10 picks were compromised enough to reach past them for a running back drafted 32nd. Opus thought the evidence against the healthiest top-10 pick was thin camp noise. Two weeks later the top-10 picks are more compromised, not less, and the healthiest one is exactly where he was.
Who Isn't On This Board
Worth knowing before you weigh the field: Kalshi's board is mutually exclusive but not exhaustive, and there is no field contract to trade, so if an unlisted rookie wins, every contract here settles No.
The 2026 draft ran 257 picks, 81 of them offensive skill players, the only positions that have ever won this award. Twenty-five of those 81 have contracts here. But the ones missing start much lower than you would guess. Every single offensive skill player drafted in the first round has a contract on this board. The six top-10 picks Kalshi did not list are David Bailey (edge), Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles (linebackers), Mansoor Delane (cornerback), and Spencer Fano and Francis Mauigoa (offensive tackles), none of them eligible for an offensive award in any realistic sense. No defender or offensive lineman has ever won it.
The highest-drafted offensive skill player without a contract is Nate Boerkircher, a tight end taken 56th by Jacksonville. Behind him: three more tight ends, then Day-3 receivers. A tight end has won this award exactly once in 69 years, and that was Mike Ditka in 1961.
So the field is real but small, and the panel priced it that way at 6.0% in August. It is the Day-2-and-later tail, the Dak Prescott and Alvin Kamara path, and it runs entirely through somebody ahead of them getting hurt in September. Two of the five names ahead of them are already hurt or benched, which is the field's best argument and the reason the 6.0% has not obviously aged badly.
Dark Horses The Panel Won't Dismiss
- Cyrus Allen, Kansas City Chiefs (1/2¢, August blend 5.0%): the widest gap left on the board with the August blend above the price, 5.0% against 1.5 cents, on a fifth-round pick; a 5.0% blend on a fifth-rounder is the panel's most speculative number here, and the market has moved away from it, not toward it. Within three days of camp he had earned first-team reps with Patrick Mahomes, and Andy Reid said he had earned Mahomes' trust. The market has cut him from 2.5 cents to 1.5 since August 23, and his row is still busy: 2,483 contracts in the last day, nearly double the 1,273 on the favorite. Sonnet put him above healthy first-rounders on the logic that "first-team Mahomes reps within three days is a stronger signal than buried WR3/4 status on a crowded first-round pedigree."
- Carson Beck, Arizona Cardinals (4/5¢, August blend 0.8%): the row this page has been ignoring. Beck carries 137,234 contracts of open interest, third on the board behind only Price and Love, against a 0.8% August blend. The panel could not find a path for a third-round quarterback; the market has 4.5 cents of somebody's money saying one might exist, and the 3.7-point spread is the largest market-over-panel gap anywhere on the page.
- KC Concepcion, Cleveland Browns (5/6¢, August blend 4.0%): the other row in this list where the market sits above the panel, by a point and a half rather than Beck's 3.7, and the one drawing the round-lot buying described above. Nothing in the reporting this week explains the 22,500 contracts; the price did not move, so whoever bought was happy to pay the offer and stop.
- Omar Cooper Jr., New York Jets (1/2¢, August blend 2.3%): a first-round receiver at 30th overall priced like a seventh-rounder, though he shares a room with Garrett Wilson. His row turned over 5,675 contracts in the last day on 19,834 of open interest, a 29 percent churn that is the highest ratio on the board, on one of its smallest positions. That is a row being repriced, not accumulated, and nobody outside the tape would know it.
The August Checklist, Scored
On August 23 this page listed four checkable events, each with the direction it would push. Here is where they stand.
| Checkpoint named August 23 | What happened | Direction the panel said | Direction the market went |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle's cut to 53: does Charbonnet stay on PUP? | Reserve/PUP, August 30; at least four games out | Price up | Price 12.5 to 13.5 |
| Las Vegas names a Week 1 starter | Cousins named September 2; Mendoza the backup | Mendoza down | Mendoza 14.5 to 11.5 |
| Arizona's Week 1 report on Love's ankle | "About 50-50" (September 1); first report due September 9 | Any limitation caps him | Love 16.5 to 15.5, pending |
| San Francisco's Week 1 target distribution | Purdy: "a big part of our offense"; game is September 10 | Starter role validates the premium | Stribling 8.5 to 13.0, pending the game |
Three of four have resolved or half-resolved, and each moved the market the way the panel said it would. That is not the same as the panel being right about the award, which will not be known until February. It is the narrower claim this page can actually make: the reasoning the eight seats used in August has survived contact with the roster moves it was betting on.
The one it did not anticipate is Conner's IR designation, which helps Love, and it is the reason the frozen 14.0% on the favorite is the number on this page I trust least.
What To Watch Next
Four dates, in order, each with the contract it moves:
- September 9, Patriots at Seahawks, and Arizona's first injury report. Price's first NFL carries are the first live data on any contract here, and they arrive the same night Arizona files its first report on Love. Love listed as a full participant, or cleared, and the 50-50 becomes the story of a favorite who was never really in doubt; his 15/16 should firm. Anything short of that and Allgeier's contract, which does not exist on this board, becomes the trade nobody can make.
- September 10, 49ers at Rams in Melbourne, 8:35 p.m. ET. Stribling's snap and target counts in a three-receiver set answer Opus's dissent one way or the other, and the 13,613 contracts bought Thursday will know by Friday morning whether they were early or wrong.
- September 13, Cardinals at Chargers and Dolphins at Raiders. Love's first carries, or his first inactive listing; and Cousins' first start, which is Mendoza's first game as a spectator. A bad Cousins afternoon is the only thing that moves the 11/12.
- Whenever Kubiak stops saying "Miami first." The Raiders do not have a bye until Week 13, so there is no natural switch point on the schedule. Mendoza's contract is a bet on an unscheduled decision.
Settlement Timeline
| What | When |
|---|---|
| NFL Regular Season Opens: Seattle Hosts New England (A Wednesday); Price Is The First Contract On This Board To Play | September 9, 2026 |
| 49ers Vs. Rams In Melbourne (Thursday, 8:35 P.M. ET) | September 10, 2026 |
| Cardinals At Chargers; Raiders Host The Dolphins | September 13, 2026 |
| Earliest Charbonnet And Conner Returns From Reserve Lists (After Four Games) | October 2026 |
| AP Ballots Cast (End Of Regular Season, Before Playoffs) | January 2027 |
| Award Announced At NFL Honors | February 2027 |
| Kalshi Contract Expiration | March 30, 2027 |
This page is re-scored when the story moves: a starter named, a designation changed, a contract added. Prices as of September 4, 2026; panel numbers as of the August 23 run.
How To Read These Prices
- Eligibility. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange, not a sportsbook. 18+, and availability varies by state as of September 2026.
- The Overround. The 26 named midpoints now sum to about 103.5 cents, down from about 112 on August 23. The book has tightened as the tail rows went to no bid. Re-scaled against that sum, Price's 13.5 cents is about a 13.0% implied probability; Love's 15.5 is about 15.0%.
- Liquidity. About 2,007,600 contracts have traded across the event, more than double the 982,900 on August 23, and still concentrated at the top. The wide spreads that marked the August board have mostly closed: Stribling's 12/14 is now the widest in the top five, and Washington's 3-bid, 8-ask book from August is a penny wide.
- Sportsbook cross-check. DraftKings had Love at 5.75 in decimal odds, a 17.4% implied probability, with Mendoza and Tate both at 6.50 (15.4%) as of FOX Sports' September 1 board, before the Cousins announcement. Among the five names FOX priced, DraftKings still had Mendoza and Tate tied for second while the exchange has both tied for fourth. Measured in probability the bigger split is Stribling, whom DraftKings had at 16.00 (6.3%) against a normalized 12.6% on the exchange. And DraftKings did not quote Jadarian Price at all in that extract, so the exchange's second choice and the panel's favorite has no book comparison here.
- Time. This market can run to its March 30, 2027 expiration; capital is committed through NFL Honors.
- Not Advice. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
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The Bottom Line
In August the market was pricing April and the panel was pricing August. In September the market has caught up: the No. 1 pick is a backup and costs 11 cents, the second-round receiver the panel liked at 8.5 costs 13, and the running back drafted 32nd has the mechanism the panel built its case on written into Seattle's roster. What the market has not done is abandon the favorite. Love lost one cent on a 50-50 report because the backfield behind him emptied the same week the ankle news arrived, and that is the one place where the frozen August numbers are most likely to be wrong in the market's favor.
The award is voted at the end of the regular season by people who watched games, and it goes to rookies who play from Week 1. Twelve days ago that rule made Price the panel's favorite. The roster moves since have not changed the rule; they have removed the two cleanest arguments against it. The first of these contracts to play is the panel's favorite, Wednesday night in Seattle, and every number above gets graded in public when the AP announces the award at NFL Honors, next to the same panel's boards for the NFL MVP field and the full Kalshi NFL awards hub.
