🔥 HOT NEWS: Why Drake Maye’s rise isn’t the warning sign some Bears fans think it is ⚡.DH

The question surfaced almost immediately.

As soon as the New England Patriots sealed their AFC Championship win, the discourse ignited — quietly at first, then louder with every replay of Drake Maye’s gutsy fourth-quarter scramble.

Did the Chicago Bears make a mistake?

It’s a natural reaction. Fans are wired to compare outcomes, especially when quarterbacks from the same draft class take wildly different paths. Drake Maye is headed to the Super Bowl in just his second season. Caleb Williams is not.

On the surface, that gap feels uncomfortable.

Maye’s 2025–26 season has been nothing short of remarkable. He turned a 4–13 Patriots team into a 14–3 juggernaut. He led the NFL in efficiency. He did more with less than any quarterback in football. And when the weather turned ugly in Denver, he didn’t blink — he ran when the moment demanded it and carried New England back to the Super Bowl for the first time since Tom Brady left.

That kind of success demands recognition.

But recognition doesn’t require regret.

The temptation is to frame this as a zero-sum decision — that Maye’s rise must mean Williams was the wrong pick. That Chicago somehow missed its chance. That pressure now needs to accelerate.

That logic is flawed.

You can admire what Maye has done without diminishing Caleb Williams. And you can acknowledge Williams hasn’t yet reached the same milestones without pretending his trajectory is compromised.

Context matters.

Williams stepped into a different situation — a different roster, a different timeline, a different kind of burden.

And despite that, his second season revealed something critical: he elevated the Bears beyond where they were in 2025. His late-game heroics weren’t flashes.

They were patterns. The clutch gene wasn’t theoretical anymore — it was functional.

That matters more than the calendar.

Yes, Jayden Daniels has already played in a conference championship. Yes, Bo Nix technically reached one earlier. But neither has faced the same combination of expectations, scrutiny, and structural instability that Williams inherited.

And that’s the point.

Super Bowl appearances are not linear rewards for talent. They’re intersections of timing, health, coaching, and opportunity. Maye found his intersection early. Williams hasn’t yet.

That doesn’t mean he won’t.

In fact, there’s a strong argument that what Williams is building may be more sustainable. The pairing with Ben Johnson is only beginning. The offense is still evolving around him, not peaking ahead of schedule. There’s room — and time — to grow.

And time is the one thing fans want to take away too quickly.

What shouldn’t happen now is artificial pressure. Williams doesn’t need to “respond” to Maye’s Super Bowl run. He doesn’t need to chase comparisons. He doesn’t need to accelerate his timeline to satisfy narratives.

The pressure already exists — because Williams wants to be great.

That internal pressure is what transformed his game in 2025. It’s what allowed him to cement himself as a superstar by season’s end. And it’s what will eventually take him where he wants to go.

The Bears didn’t draft a finished product. They drafted a future.

Drake Maye reached the Super Bowl first. That’s true.
Caleb Williams may still shape what that future looks like.

And if there’s one thing the NFL keeps proving, it’s this: the first arrival doesn’t always write the final chapter.