Field Gulls readers have been (im)patiently awaiting the results of the 2026 Armchair GM Challenge, and now the time has come for those fans to be underwhelmed with the results of what may have been the least exciting Armchair GM Challenge in history.
Things got off to an insanely hot start, with more than three quarters of the 199 entrants guessing Jadarian Price, and instantly creating a logjam at the top of the standings right away. Entrants continued their strong performance through the first
four picks, with strong evidence of a desire to change at right guard throughout the entries. The number of fans who projected each of the first four Seattle selections were as follows:
- Jadarian Price: 150
- Bud Clark: 54
- Julian Neal: 28
- Beau Stephens: 71
On an interesting note, though, Stephens was not the most projected selection at guard, as University of Oregon guard Emmanuel Pregnon was on 95 of 199 (47.7%) of submissions, easily exceeding even Stephens. Those fans who had hoped to see Pregnon inserted into the offensive line are unlikely to ever learn exactly why John Schneider and the Seahawks front office did not make the moves necessary to add the Duck to the roster, but it’s possible that age may have played a role.
Specifically, as noted recently here on Field Gulls, part of the allure of extending Derick Hall at the present time is that he remains young at just 25 years of age, and therefore still has time to add knowledge and technique while developing physically before likely reaching his peak performance in his late twenties. In contrast, after starting his college career at Wyoming before transferring to USC and then to Oregon, Pregnon is currently 24 years old and will be 25 in October. That makes him six months older than 2025 Seahawks first round pick Grey Zabel, and for seven and a half weeks in October and November Pregnon and 2022 first round pick Charles Cross will both be 25 years old until Cross finally reaches 26 the day before Thanksgiving.
Coming back to the Armchair GM Challenge, though, it was after the selection of Stephens that things went off the rails, with not a single entrant correctly predicting any of the final four selections the Hawks added in the draft. That fact, however, is more due to whoever put together the event this year than the entrants, as none of the final four players selected by the Seahawks were even available for entrants to select.
For those curious, the reason why none of the final four players were available fell into two categories.
- Emannuel Henderson and Michael Dansby were left off intentionally because only the top 350 players from the 2026 Consensus Big Board were to be included in the list, and they landed at 357 and 613, respectively.
- Deven Eastern and Andre Fuller should have been included, but were not, so that’s getting chalked up to designer and programmer incompetence.
With all that laid out, here is how the top ten of the 2026 Armchair GM Challenge finished:
8T: Chancellor_HUN (69 points)
8T: gochaw82 (69 points)
8T: MattyBPhweee (69 points)
5T: The System Is Rigged! (70 points)
5T: Austin H (70 points)
5T: Wait!!What?? (70 points)
As an interesting side note, entrant Wait!!What?? submitted a pair of entries, and scored 75 points on the first entry, but that entry was cancelled out by the submission of a second, lower scoring entry, thus Wait!!What?? finished in a three-way tie for fifth instead of claiming sole possession of fifth place.
4: Rolls26 (81 points)
And then in the underwhelming final result no one saw coming, the top three finished out like this:
1T: Moackus (84 points)
1T: McMooper (84 points)
1T: OhioHawk4372 (84 points)
And that’s that. A three-way with no tiebreaker because the incompetent designer and programmer not only left a bunch of players off of the selection lists, but also forgot to include the tiebreakers that have been included in the past. It’s kind of like a split championship, like the 1991 Washington Huskies, for Moackus, McMooper and OhioHawk4372, and now it’s on to training camp.
