We’re two days away from the start of the NFL’s regular season, but some folks are still crashing together fantasy football draft strategies before the Thursday Night Football Kickoff. If you’re among those people and you want to have Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams on your fantasy squad, we’ve got you covered.
On a recent episode of NBC Sports Chicago’s “Under Center Podcast” fantasy expert Connor Rogers joined the show to share his advice on how fans can best set up their teams for success with Williams on the roster.
The key for Rogers is that fans should consider Williams a “dart throw” player. That’s to say there’s a chance that drafting Williams is a bullseye for fantasy managers– but there’s also a chance he’s a miss. Accordingly, Rogers believes Williams should be the second QB on your roster so that you’re not left high and dry if Williams struggles in his rookie season.
One school of thought is to use top-tier capital to draft a player like Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen, but Rogers likes a different approach if you want to add Williams to your team.
“What I like to do here is take a ‘dart’ guy like Caleb Williams, where the ceiling is so, so high, I like to take one of the mid-tier options with that dart guy,” Rogers said on the show. “So do you go get Brock Purdy later on and then a couple rounds later take a Caleb Williams?
“It’s going to be in the double-digit rounds. I think in a standard league where you have 12 teams, everyone’s going to take one of the top quarterbacks somewhat early, Caleb Williams is going to be looking more in the 11th, 12th, 13th rounds depending on what you could be on for his ceiling.”
Even though Rogers doesn’t think fantasy managers should use a valuable draft pick on Williams he does support fans who think he’ll outperform his ADP.
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“I love taking those fliers on quarterbacks… There is always a quarterback that is not taken as a top-10, top-12 quarterback and finishes in the top five or seven quarterbacks. Two years ago it was Geno Smith, last year it was Jordan Love.”
Why not Williams this year?
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“Maybe they’ll be a little careful with him as a rookie, but you know if you need him to really drop back and take over the game, we’ve seen him do it.”
Rogers also believes Williams is the fantasy rookie quarterback to target, even if he’s not projected to put up big rushing numbers– a valuable asset for fantasy QBs– and even if he’s not currently the most popular rookie QB in fantasy circles.
“I am not taking Jayden Daniels over Caleb Williams right now,” Rogers said. “I just think at the end of the day you have to be a proven quarterback through the air. Jayden Daniels made a lot of nice strides and he will start for Washington, but the upside as a passer for Caleb Williams is in a different stratosphere for me. He would be the first rookie quarterback that I would be taking, although that has not been the case in a lot of standard drafts.”
