Caleb Williams is Bound for Best Ball Greatness in 2026-27
Williams is being drafted as a mid-range QB1 on Underdog. We think the best ball fantasy market is undervaluing the mercurial and supremely talented 3rd year star, on the basis that he possesses significant untapped upside both as a real life player and fantasy asset.
The Value Gap
Underdog drafters currently have Williams at QB6, around pick 71 overall. It’s a fairly premium ADP. Flagplant has him at QB4, 63rd overall.
Our position is about ceiling. We have him grouped with Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Drake Maye, and Joe Burrow, just above where summer drafters are clicking him here in early July. We think there’s room to run ADP-wise, making now an opportune time to load up on shares before training camp ensues.
In our view, the valuation disparity boils down to our conviction that Caleb Williams is an elite player; that the market hasn’t adequately priced in what Ben Johnson is building in Chicago; that Williams will benefit materially from another full season of continuity in that system; and that his three primary weapons are entering the year healthier than they were in 2025.¹
Bottom line: the best ball market treats Williams like a solid QB1 floor play. We see top-4 positional upside based on an overlooked and uniquely tantalizing rushing profile, the Bears’ elite offensive ecosystem, and the fact that Williams is one of the most purely gifted passers in recent memory.
Here's the case.
Williams is an Extremely Elite Talent
The situation and the scheme help explain why Williams is undervalued from a fantasy perspective. We’ll get to those aspects shortly. His talent explains why the ceiling is also exceptionally high.
Williams was the first overall pick in the 2024 draft. Flashes of genuine brilliance show up constantly on tape (shoutout to Jacob Gibbs for the sick film cut-up).
PFF's full-season tracking (regular season plus playoffs) credits Williams with 37 big-time throws, second-most in the NFL behind only Matthew Stafford's 58 (absurd). His 5.4% big-time throw rate trails only Stafford and Jordan Love among quarterbacks with a full season of dropbacks.
The 24 turnover-worthy plays that come with it, a 3.1% rate, is almost exactly league average for that same group, meaning the highlight-reel throws carry some risk, but the splash-play production is legitimately elite.
In last year’s Wild Card win over Green Bay, Williams completed six big-time throws, tied for the most by any quarterback in any game across the entire 2025 season, and posted a 77.3 PFF grade, the second-highest mark among all quarterbacks that wild card weekend. Williams also finished 2025 with seven game-winning drives, playoffs included. The Bears won 12 regular + postseason games last year.
He wins games with extremely difficult explosive throws. And he has significant room to clean up his routine completions, meaning he isn’t a finished product as a player. For a third-year quarterback this objectively good, that’s a buying opportunity. We believe the ceiling is significantly higher even than what he’s put on tape so far in his short career, both as a passer and a rusher.
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The Rushing Floor + Ceiling Combo
Coupled with his genuinely generational arm talent is Williams’ underrated rushing floor:
He has 158 career carries for 877 yards and 3 touchdowns in 34 career games (25.8 yards per game, 5.55 yards-per-carry).
He's earned 55 first downs on those 158 carries, a 34.8% conversion rate, which is just above league average.
In 2025, PFF graded his rushing at 82.1 among quarterbacks who played at least 20% of their team's offensive snaps, trailing only Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, Patrick Mahomes, and Justin Herbert, ahead of Drake Maye and Lamar Jackson.
The touchdown total is the outlier stat in his profile. Three rushing touchdowns on 158 career carries is a 1.9% touchdown rate. Pulling every quarterback with recorded carries in 2025, the league-wide rate was roughly 4.9%, nearly two and a half times Williams' career rate. It’s especially pertinent given the strong yardage, first-down rate, and film, because it makes him a textbook positive regression candidate, which we don’t feel the market is pricing in sufficiently.
Any uptick in his rushing score rate would be pure incremental value layered on top of an already solid floor.
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Ben Johnson’s Consistent Schematic Brilliance
Johnson's offensive ecosystem is a historically proven, quarterback-friendly scheme.
According to NFL Analyst Ryan Paganetti, among 68 qualified play-callers with at least 70 games since 1999, Johnson ranks first in pass rate on 2nd-and-1 at 48.2%, first on 2nd-and-1-to-2 at 47.7%, and first on 2nd-and-1-to-3 at 47.5%. No projected 2026 play-caller comes within 17 percentage points of him on any of those marks. Johnson also ranks second in career dead run rate (runs that gain zero or fewer yards) at just 15.5%, trailing only Matt LaFleur (by two-hundredths of a percentage point).
Johnson’s scheme prevents defenses from playing typical percentages against his quarterback. He attacks aerially in situations where defenses expect the run, and he builds creative run concepts that keep his teams ahead of the chains. His offenses are consistently in advantageous positions to produce explosive plays.
That showed up immediately in his first year at the helm in Chicago:
Williams' sack total dropped from a league-high 68 in 2024 to 24 in 2025.
His under-centre usage jumped from 29% to 49%, fifth highest in the league.
Play-action usage increased from 19% to 32%.
The offense produced 127 explosive plays, second in the NFL behind Buffalo's 129.
Williams is entering year two in an ideal scheme with a full season of installation behind it. We’re pricing him as a player operating in one of the league’s most stable and explosive offensive systems entering its second chapter of functional implementation. Giddy up.
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Accuracy Concerns Are a Risk, but Part of the Buy Window
Williams' near-league-worst passing accuracy in 2025 is the most ominous variable that could prevent a quantum leap in his 2026 fantasy output.
His 2025 expected completion percentage (xCOMP%) was 65%. His actual completion percentage was 58.1%. That -6.9 differential was second-worst in the NFL among quarterbacks with at least 135 attempts, trailing only Brady Cook (sorry, Jets fans).
But the context is more telling than the raw stats indicate:
Part of it was drops: PFF credited Bears pass catchers with 34 dropped passes on Williams' throws in 2025, third-most in the league.
Crediting him with even half of those drops (17 additional completions) would move his raw completion rate from 58.1% to 61.1%. League average completion rate in 2025 was 64.3%.
We’re talking about a difference of roughly one completion per regular season game across a full season moving the number ~3%.
Part of it was (and will continue to be) “shot selection:” Williams carried the NFL’s 6th highest average depth of target (9.2 yards) in 2025.
Obviously, deeper throws convert at lower rates. They’re also the type of throws that deliver chunk gains and touchdowns (aka fantasy points), which Williams excels at.
Our main concern for Williams’ is on-target rate, which measures ball placement independent of whether the pass was actually caught. His was a league-worst 64.6% in 2025. But, his' interception rate has been very low across both of his professional seasons (6 INTs as a rookie, 7 in 2025), and his overall decision-making/risk-reward profile grades well comparatively.
But two seasons of below-average completion rates under two different coaching staffs is undeniably concerning. And it very well might be a persistent trait rather than a fixable input.
Whether Williams can materially close the gap is a unknown, but we’re willing to bet on him doing so given the innate talent and underlying offensive situation in which he operates.
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What Else Could Go Wrong?
If the target tree stays as diffuse as it was in 2025², Williams' season-long ceiling could be capped regardless of potential accuracy gains, since volume would get split too many ways for Odunze, Loveland, and Burden to collectively make a material efficiency difference.
The other risk is that Chicago simply doesn't need Williams' arm to win. We doubt that, given his several clutch game-winning performances last season, but this was, for all intents and purposes, a run-heavy team in 2025: 3rd in the NFL in rushing yards per game (152.1), 18th in passing yards per game (229.9). A team that wins with a strong ground game and short-area efficiency has less incentive to push passing volume, which could limit Williams' accumulative statistical upside independent of anything he personally improves.
The counters to these very reasonable points sit in our arguments above: Chicago's run-first identity is the same one generating Williams' personal rushing floor and Johnson's under-centre, play-action-driven passing attack, which is the exact mechanism behind the team’s 127 explosive plays and a franchise passing record in 2025.
Whether that relationship holds as the target tree theoretically consolidates and the passing game matures is a fair question, but it's one the 2025 tape already leans on answering in Williams' favour.
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Our Caleb Williams Draft Strategy
Williams demonstrates rare arm and athletic talent on tape, carries a quietly strong rushing floor, plays in a proven, extremely explosive scheme, and is priced as a solid QB1 floor play. He needs to score more rushing touchdowns and improve his on-target rate to tap into the ceiling outcome we’re projecting, and we believe he will. In our view, his profile supports genuine top-4 upside in fantasy football. and he’s just so damn fun to watch.
We’re drafting Williams aggressively in best ball formats. I have him on over 14% of my Underdog teams through 40+ drafts, stacked with one of his primary pass catchers (stack windows below accurate as of July 5, 2026) in all instances. We recommend you do the same:
Luther Burden, Mid-round 4, Williams target = picks ~64-68
Colston Loveland, 4-5 turn, Williams target = picks ~69-76
Our favourite stack of the bunch, because it allows you to draft Williams at his cheapest while securing an elite tight end. The risk is that the Burden or Odunze drafter can select Williams before you get a chance to.
Loveland is on 18% of my Underdog teams so far - maybe we should write about him next…
Rome Odunze, 5-6 turn, Williams target = picks ~61-65
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Notes:
¹Wide receiver Rome Odunze played through a foot stress fracture that cost him five regular-season games and limited him severely during the games in which he did play post-injury, including in the playoffs (he had just 4 catches and 88 yards across Chicago’s two playoff contests last season). Colston Loveland missed his entire rookie offseason program after shoulder surgery. Luther Burden missed OTAs and minicamp with a hamstring injury and wasn't cleared until training camp. All three are currently healthy, with Burden and Loveland are getting a normal offseason program for the first time in their NFL careers. ²In 2025, DJ Moore was a target-share drain on an already diffuse passing offense, where seven different Bears pass catchers cleared 298 receiving yards. With Moore gone, we expect the target tree to consolidate sharply toward the team's high-skill emerging players in Rome Odunze, Luther Burden, and Colston Loveland. We anticipate that Williams' efficiency and overall passing ceiling will consequently increase alongside their increased involvement and continued development.