This is what we’ve been waiting for, fantasy football enthusiasts. The NFL Draft is under way, and we finally get to see where the rookie prospects are going to launch their professional careers. And NFL Draft landing spots allow us to start to zero in on fantasy football and dynasty rookie draft pick values. Here, we’ll break down the fantasy football outlook of Caleb Williams now that he has been drafted by the Chicago Bears.
Throughout the draft, we’ll take a closer look at fantasy-relevant prospects, giving you an overview of their strengths and weaknesses, and assessing their fantasy value in both redraft and dynasty formats.
Let’s dig in.
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Fantasy Football Rookie Draft Outlook
Fitz’s Fantasy Football Outlook
The Chicago Bears have spent decades in search of a franchise quarterback, and they hope they landed one Thursday night when they selected USC’s Caleb Williams with the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft.
Widely regarded as the top quarterback in a good QB class, the 21-year-old Williams won the Heisman trophy as a sophomore after setting school records for passing yards (4,321) and TD passes (38) in 2022. Williams wasn’t as statistically prolific in 2023, with 3,633 passing yards and 30 TD passes, but USC’s offensive line struggled to give Williams adequate protection, and the play of Williams’ pass catchers was uneven.
Williams’ special sauce is his ability to improvise and make plays on the run. He’s a creative problem-solver capable of using clever footwork to escape a disappearing pocket or varying his arm slot on the move and still delivering a perfect strike à la Patrick Mahomes.
Although he can be a virtuoso jazz musician when plays break down, Williams is capable of making plays from the pocket, too. He has a strong, accurate arm. He makes anticipatory throws, and he’s able to fit balls into tight windows. Williams threw only 10 interceptions in 599 pass attempts over his final two college seasons.
While he’s no Lamar Jackson, Williams should offer some fantasy value as a runner. Although Williams usually keeps his eyes downfield while he’s on the move, looking for an available receiver, he isn’t afraid to take off and run. He has some speed and elusiveness, and he had 21 rushing touchdowns in his final two college seasons.
The biggest knocks on Williams are that he can be a little too quick to leave the pocket and a little too aggressive in trying to create big plays rather than making safer throws. Williams also coughed up 33 fumbles over his three college seasons.
Unlike last year’s No. 1 overall draft pick, Bryce Young, who as a rookie was hamstrung by a dreadful supporting cast in Carolina, Williams appears to be entering a reasonably healthy ecosystem.
The Bears already had one terrific wide receiver with D.J. Moore and added another, trading for Keenan Allen in March. Even with that duo, the Bears are likely to draft another receiver from an outstanding WR class. Cole Kmet and Gerald Everett give the Bears some pass-catching firepower at tight end. Chicago’s offensive line isn’t great, but it’s not a train wreck either. PFF graded the Bears 23rd in pass blocking last season, and the Bears ranked 26th in adjusted sack rate last year, per FTN (though former Bears QB Justin Fields is notorious for taking too many sacks).
Williams had a predraft Expert Consensus Ranking of QB18 for redraft. His predraft ADP in Underdog best-ball leagues was QB17. Those are fairly conservative rankings, and I think it would be reasonable to regard Williams as a high-end QB for redraft — somewhere in the QB13-QB15 range.
In dynasty leagues, Williams figures to be the consensus 1.01 in superflex leagues. Some people holding the No. 1 pick in superflex leagues might opt for the relative certainty of one of the top wide receivers, but QB strength is critical in superflex leagues, and Williams has a realistic chance of becoming a top-five NFL quarterback. I have Williams ranked QB6 in dynasty, one spot behind Anthony Richardson and one spot ahead of Joe Burrow.
In 1QB dynasty leagues, where the QB position isn’t as important because of ample supply and reduced demand, Williams should be a late-first-round rookie pick. He has the potential to make a significant impact even in 1QB dynasty leagues, but it would be hard to justify spending a top-7 pick on Williams in such leagues when there are so many outstanding WR prospects in the 2024 draft class.
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Thor’s NFL Draft Profile & Player Comp
Caleb Williams (USC)
6011/214 | RAS: N/A
Player comparison: Aaron Rodgers
Caleb Williams is an electric playmaker with a huge creative bent to his game. Supremely confident, he believes in his ability and what he’s seeing to a ludicrous degree. When things are going well, Williams is as dangerous as they come. When they aren’t, his propensity to turn down easy profits hunting for explosive play bogs down drives.
Williams is a very good athlete with a live arm. He has effortless velocity and doesn’t need both feet under him to zing it on the money to any sector. He is very good at throwing on the run. Some of his biggest jaw-dropping throws have come without both feet under him, and some have even come with one of them off the ground.
Williams’ tape is littered with accuracy, touch and placement. He can make all the throws, and he knows it. As a thrower, he’s audacious without being reckless. Williams only threw 14 career interceptions over 1,099 attempts.
Williams is extremely dangerous out of the pocket. He consistently puts defenders into conflict and coaxes them into bad decisions. He loves getting out to the perimeter and throwing on the run. Williams can also tuck and move the chains in a blink when the look isn’t there.
This makes him especially dangerous in the red zone, where he was elite in college. Williams rushed for 27 TD over two-and-a-half seasons as a starter. If he doesn’t like what he’s seeing, he’ll try to steal the touchdown himself.
I love the way he moves in the pocket, shuffling and sliding around to manipulate angles and keep a halo of safety around him. Pressure does not sneak up on Williams, who consistently makes pass-rushers miss. He’s very difficult to corral, even for free rushers.
Williams’ prerogative to extend plays is a two-way street. He has a highlight reel full of electric plays out of structure. Still, he has a bad habit of extending plays into a bridge-to-nowhere plank, leading to stalled-out drives or slap-the-ball-out fumbles. Williams fumbled 32 times over 35 career games.
Last season, Williams posted the highest pressure-to-sack ratio (23.2%) of my top-20 quarterbacks ranked in this class. That was way up from the year before, when Williams had a solid 16.0% pressure-to-sack ratio. Williams won the Heisman that year while throwing for 4,537 yards with 52 total TDs. Williams regressed a bit on a struggling USC team that went 7-5 in 2023. His play under pressure, elite in 2022 (85.1 PFF grade), utterly devolved in 2023 (41.6).
You can only blame so much of that on his offensive line, as Williams’ play style forces linemen to hold blocks longer and can sometimes scramble him into corners he cannot escape from. Williams led the FBS with 50 dropbacks in which the ball didn’t come out within six seconds of the snap. His 3.16-second average throw time was second-highest in this draft class, .01 of a second behind UTEP’s Gavin Hardison, who reads the field like it’s covered in Sanskrit.
Williams actually improved in this area after averaging 3.44 seconds per attempt during his outstanding 2022 season. Further improvement will be necessary to become an NFL star, as taking that long to throw in the NFL is not viable. Last year – and I’m sorry to have to mention this, Bears fans – Justin Fields led the NFL with a 3.39 average time to throw. That, plus Fields’ elevated pressure-to-sack rate – the two are correlated – was the biggest red flag of Fields’ evaluation coming out of Ohio State.
The path for Williams to improve entails mastering in-structure timing routes. The bad news is he did very little of that at USC. The good news is that it’s theoretically coachable, whereas Williams’ out-of-structure magic is not. But the fact remains that, at present, Caleb Williams doesn’t throw receivers open; he buys time until they are. There will be moments in every NFL game when that inclination is appropriate. There will be many more when he is going to be asked to manufacture completions in-rhythm from within the pocket.
If Williams busts, the reason will be because he never becomes more than a see-it, throw-it quarterback.
The question comes down to this: “Is Williams using scrambling as a crutch to give his receivers time to get out into space and break off routes, where he can easily identify them as open before releasing because he is incapable of anticipating? Or was that more a function of USC head coach Lincoln Riley letting Williams play playground ball because no player was more talented on any field that Williams stepped onto?”
Williams’ ceiling is the highest of any quarterback in this class. He has legitimate special ability. You don’t have to squint to envision him as a top-five NFL quarterback. Because of that, he’s my QB1. But there is risk in the profile. Williams needs his Andy Reid in the NFL, someone who can teach him how to differentiate between the times it’s appropriate to put on the superhero cape and when it’s best to take the short profit and move on to the next play.
Check out more NFL Draft profiles and player comps from Thor in our 2024 NFL Draft Guide
Dynasty Rookie Draft Rankings
Our analysts provide their latest rookie draft rankings below. And also check out our expert consensus dynasty rookie draft rankings!
More Dynasty Rookie Draft Advice
- DBro’s Dynasty Rookie Draft Primers
- DBro’s Top 50 Rankings & Player Notes
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