🔥 HOT NEWS: The NFL Keeps Rewarding the Easy Path While Caleb Williams Pays the Price ⚡.DH

Caleb Williams has become painfully familiar with this feeling.

Another ranking drops. Another name sits above his. And once again, Bears fans are left wondering how a quarterback who dragged Chicago into relevance keeps getting framed as second best.

According to FanDuel’s latest quarterback rankings covering the last three NFL drafts, Williams comes in at No. 2. On paper, that should be a celebration. In reality, it lands like a quiet dismissal—because the No. 1 spot belongs to Drake Maye.

For Chicago, the frustration isn’t about disrespecting Maye’s talent. It’s about context that keeps getting ignored.

This isn’t the first time recency bias has worked against Williams. In 2024, Jayden Daniels was crowned the “right” No. 1 pick after a dazzling rookie season.

Pundits rushed to declare that the Bears had made a mistake. A year later, that confidence has aged poorly. Daniels regressed. Williams surged.

And yet, the cycle repeats.

Yes, Williams’ reputation improved dramatically in 2025 under Ben Johnson. His breakout year wasn’t just productive—it was transformative.

He reset expectations for himself and for a franchise that had spent years searching for relevance.

Williams shattered the Bears’ single-season passing record. He became the first quarterback under 25 to engineer seven fourth-quarter comeback victories in a single season.

Chicago didn’t just compete late in games—they terrified opponents holding leads. That doesn’t show up neatly in rankings, but it changes how teams play.

More importantly, it changed what Chicago believed was possible.

Williams didn’t thrive in comfort. He thrived in chaos. He was asked to do more, more often, with less margin for error than his peers. Tight windows. Late-game pressure. Constant adjustment. He didn’t just manage games—he carried them.

Meanwhile, Maye’s rise has come with a different texture. The Patriots are in the Super Bowl. Maye is an MVP candidate. Those facts matter. But so does the road that led there.

New England’s path was clean. Favorable matchups. Stability. A roster built to absorb mistakes. Maye has been excellent—but he hasn’t been tested the way Williams has. Not yet.

That nuance is what Bears fans can’t shake.

Rankings love results. They struggle with resistance. They rarely quantify how hard the climb actually was.

Williams didn’t just elevate his play—he elevated an entire franchise’s timeline. He turned January football in Chicago from a fantasy into an expectation. And he did it before the roster fully caught up to him.

Now, heading into 2026, the Bears are viewed as legitimate Super Bowl contenders because of one thing: quarterback belief. That belief starts and ends with Caleb Williams.

So when rankings place him behind another familiar name, the reaction isn’t outrage—it’s exhaustion. A sense that Williams keeps being graded on a harsher curve. That excellence only counts if it comes with hardware, not hardship.

Drake Maye may deserve praise. He may even deserve the moment.

But any list that refuses to seriously question why Caleb Williams isn’t No. 1 among his draft peers isn’t neutral—it’s incomplete.

And Bears fans are done pretending otherwise.