2. Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears
Even though his rookie season was borderline disastrous, it was worth the suffering for what Bears fans experienced in the 2025 season.
They've got themselves a football player at the quarterback position.
Williams came into the NFL with unfairly high expectations after a dominating collegiate career, which included one of the best seasons any of us has seen (2022 at USC). Williams was playing on a different level during that 2022 season, and the league knew exactly what they were getting from him when he came to the NFL.
This is a guy who makes the impossible look possible on a football field. And Bears fans have now witnessed that on the biggest stages. The primary issues involved reigning in his overall skill set to be more efficient every down. And head coach Ben Johnson helped with that.
Williams cut down on the turnovers significantly in his 2nd season as well as on the number of sacks he took. He showed discipline and good decision making, and if the Bears keep giving him the type of efficient run game we saw from him last year, he's only going to get better.
1. Drake Maye, New England Patriots
Out of all of the quarterbacks in the last few draft classes, nobody has finished closer to an MVP than Drake Maye last year. Nobody has finished as close to a Super Bowl as Drake Maye, either.
Although the Patriots were obliterated by Seattle in the Super Bowl, Maye now has some fantastic postseason experience, and a new chip on his shoulder entering year three.
Over the past two seasons, we've all gotten to see exactly why so many people felt like Maye was a legitimate candidate to be the 1st overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, and it's become increasingly more difficult to understand how the Patriots got him with the 3rd pick.
He's got all of the traits you look for at the position physically. He's an elite athlete with top-tier arm talent, and the Patriots have put that to good use. They had the best vertical passing attack in the NFL last season, and now they've got AJ Brown and Romeo Doubs joining the receiver room.
Maye's postseason performance cast some doubt over what he can do against the top defenses in the NFL, but his overall body of work so far has been the best of the quarterbacks taken in the last three draft classes.
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