- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 1,135,698
- Reaction score
- 59
The Detroit Lions headed into the 2025 season dreaming that their time could finally be nigh after claiming the top seed in the NFC in 2024. Instead, what transpired was a 9-8 finish that nobody at Ford Field saw coming. But now, on the eve of 2026 training camps, excitement is once again starting to creep in.
The addition of Isiah Pacheco from Kansas City at running back provides Jahmyr Gibbs with some much-needed assistance on the ground, while Cade Mays takes over for the retiring Frank Ragnow at center. Suddenly, online betting sites make the Lions contenders once more.
One can bet on sports at Bovada, and the American bookmaker currently positions Detroit as the narrow +150 favorite to reclaim the NFC North title in 2026. They are then closely followed by the Green Bay Packers at +240 and the defending champion Chicago Bears at +315. But where do each of the four teams’ starting quarterbacks rank in comparison to their contemporaries within the division? Here are our NFC North QB power rankings.
Caleb Williams suffered a franchise record of sixty-eight sacks in his rookie year. Not because the 2024 number one overall pick couldn’t move, couldn’t process, couldn’t read — he could do all of it — but because he was being buried alive behind one of the worst offensive lines in recent memory, absorbing every “product of college football” take while the protection collapsed around him every Sunday.
It would have broken lesser competitors. Williams absorbed it and waited. Then Ben Johnson arrived, and everything changed. His former Heisman trophy-winning quarterback shone in his sophomore year, throwing for just shy of 4,000 yards and 27 touchdowns throughout the regular season. But statistics don’t tell you who a quarterback is. A specific moment does, and it’s thanks to this moment that Williams ranks ahead of Jared Goff in our power rankings.
Wild Card Round, trailing the Packers 21-3 in the fourth quarter, he somehow pulls off the greatest playoff comeback of all time. Then, in the Divisional Round against the much-fancied Rams, he went one better.
Down by seven, fourth down, ten yards behind the line of scrimmage. The game is functionally over. Williams scrambles back — further back — buys himself one more breath of time and launches a prayer to Cole Kmet to force overtime.
His career completion percentage, his passer rating, his rushing yards — none of it matters in that moment. Only the will to throw the ball does. That’s who Caleb Williams is. That game would ultimately end in defeat after a Kamren Curl interception in overtime. But what the Wild Card comeback and that unbelievable last-gasp throw against the Rams revealed about his character means more than any statistic.
Embed tweet here – https://x.com/bovadaofficial/status/2013078575327441185?s=46&t=Jxc74bqcdlQ9Bjed4TR1Jw
Jared Goff in 2025: 68.0% completions, 4,564 yards — second in the entire league — 34 touchdowns, also second in the league, 8 interceptions, 105.5 passer rating, the second-best of his ten-year career. By any individual measure, he was elite. The Lions went 9-8 and missed the playoffs. The cruelest statistical paradox in the NFC North is that Goff played some of the best football of his life inside a structure that was quietly disintegrating around him.
His QBR ranked 17th in the league — a four-year low. That gap between his passing yards and his QBR is the story. It tells you that Goff was moving the ball efficiently in a system that had been stripped of its architect, its anchor at center, and its best offensive mind. Points per game fell from 33.2 to 28.3. Net yardage dropped by more than 36 yards per game.
Goff at number two is certainly harsh, but Williams’ displays in the postseason earned him top spot. Now 31, the Lions gunslinger arrives in 2026 with the same ability he’s always had and a rebuild situation that remains unresolved. The offensive line is still an urgent problem; it was what was responsible for the 2025 collapse more than anything else. Goff will need to find a way to manage that in 2026, or another disappointing campaign could lie in wait.
The image won’t leave. Twenty-one to three. Green Bay. Wild Card. Gone. Jordan Love had his best statistical season — 66.3% completions, 3,381 yards, 23 touchdowns, just 6 interceptions, down from 11 in each of his previous two seasons, 101.2 passer rating across 15 starts, third consecutive playoff appearance as Green Bay’s starter — and the thing everyone remembers is the collapse. That’s the unfairness of quarterbacking in a division that doesn’t forgive.
The number that matters: over the final eight games of his two-plus seasons as the starter, Love has posted a combined 111.2 passer rating. He doesn’t play well late in seasons — he plays his best football late in seasons. Which is exactly what makes the Wild Card image so maddening, and exactly why his ceiling in 2026 depends on shedding it. If Love delivers a complete 17-game performance instead of another brilliant half-season, Green Bay is a genuine NFC contender. That’s still an if. He’s answered some of the doubters. Not all of them.
He is 28 years old, signing for the veteran’s minimum, competing for a starting job against a 2024 top-ten draft pick, carrying seven seasons, zero playoff wins, one torn ACL, and a franchise that eventually stopped believing in him in a Minnesota winter. The Cardinals went 4-13 in 2025 after a foot injury against the Titans ended his season at five games. Five games. 68.3% completions, 962 yards, 6 touchdowns, 3 interceptions — tantalizing enough to make the injury feel genuinely cruel — before Jacoby Brissett finished what was already a lost season.
Now he has Justin Jefferson. The kind of receiver he never had in the desert. The kind who makes quarterbacks look like different people, which is precisely what Minnesota is gambling on — a Sam Darnold 2024 renaissance, a talent rehabilitated by circumstance, a castoff who needed better company all along. He must first beat out J.J. McCarthy in training camp, which the smart money says he does. Then comes the harder part: staying healthy long enough to prove that the talent was always real and the circumstances were always the problem.
Continue reading...
The addition of Isiah Pacheco from Kansas City at running back provides Jahmyr Gibbs with some much-needed assistance on the ground, while Cade Mays takes over for the retiring Frank Ragnow at center. Suddenly, online betting sites make the Lions contenders once more.
One can bet on sports at Bovada, and the American bookmaker currently positions Detroit as the narrow +150 favorite to reclaim the NFC North title in 2026. They are then closely followed by the Green Bay Packers at +240 and the defending champion Chicago Bears at +315. But where do each of the four teams’ starting quarterbacks rank in comparison to their contemporaries within the division? Here are our NFC North QB power rankings.
1. Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears
Caleb Williams suffered a franchise record of sixty-eight sacks in his rookie year. Not because the 2024 number one overall pick couldn’t move, couldn’t process, couldn’t read — he could do all of it — but because he was being buried alive behind one of the worst offensive lines in recent memory, absorbing every “product of college football” take while the protection collapsed around him every Sunday.
It would have broken lesser competitors. Williams absorbed it and waited. Then Ben Johnson arrived, and everything changed. His former Heisman trophy-winning quarterback shone in his sophomore year, throwing for just shy of 4,000 yards and 27 touchdowns throughout the regular season. But statistics don’t tell you who a quarterback is. A specific moment does, and it’s thanks to this moment that Williams ranks ahead of Jared Goff in our power rankings.
Wild Card Round, trailing the Packers 21-3 in the fourth quarter, he somehow pulls off the greatest playoff comeback of all time. Then, in the Divisional Round against the much-fancied Rams, he went one better.
Down by seven, fourth down, ten yards behind the line of scrimmage. The game is functionally over. Williams scrambles back — further back — buys himself one more breath of time and launches a prayer to Cole Kmet to force overtime.
His career completion percentage, his passer rating, his rushing yards — none of it matters in that moment. Only the will to throw the ball does. That’s who Caleb Williams is. That game would ultimately end in defeat after a Kamren Curl interception in overtime. But what the Wild Card comeback and that unbelievable last-gasp throw against the Rams revealed about his character means more than any statistic.
Embed tweet here – https://x.com/bovadaofficial/status/2013078575327441185?s=46&t=Jxc74bqcdlQ9Bjed4TR1Jw
2. Jared Goff, Detroit Lions
Jared Goff in 2025: 68.0% completions, 4,564 yards — second in the entire league — 34 touchdowns, also second in the league, 8 interceptions, 105.5 passer rating, the second-best of his ten-year career. By any individual measure, he was elite. The Lions went 9-8 and missed the playoffs. The cruelest statistical paradox in the NFC North is that Goff played some of the best football of his life inside a structure that was quietly disintegrating around him.
His QBR ranked 17th in the league — a four-year low. That gap between his passing yards and his QBR is the story. It tells you that Goff was moving the ball efficiently in a system that had been stripped of its architect, its anchor at center, and its best offensive mind. Points per game fell from 33.2 to 28.3. Net yardage dropped by more than 36 yards per game.
Goff at number two is certainly harsh, but Williams’ displays in the postseason earned him top spot. Now 31, the Lions gunslinger arrives in 2026 with the same ability he’s always had and a rebuild situation that remains unresolved. The offensive line is still an urgent problem; it was what was responsible for the 2025 collapse more than anything else. Goff will need to find a way to manage that in 2026, or another disappointing campaign could lie in wait.
3. Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers
The image won’t leave. Twenty-one to three. Green Bay. Wild Card. Gone. Jordan Love had his best statistical season — 66.3% completions, 3,381 yards, 23 touchdowns, just 6 interceptions, down from 11 in each of his previous two seasons, 101.2 passer rating across 15 starts, third consecutive playoff appearance as Green Bay’s starter — and the thing everyone remembers is the collapse. That’s the unfairness of quarterbacking in a division that doesn’t forgive.
The number that matters: over the final eight games of his two-plus seasons as the starter, Love has posted a combined 111.2 passer rating. He doesn’t play well late in seasons — he plays his best football late in seasons. Which is exactly what makes the Wild Card image so maddening, and exactly why his ceiling in 2026 depends on shedding it. If Love delivers a complete 17-game performance instead of another brilliant half-season, Green Bay is a genuine NFC contender. That’s still an if. He’s answered some of the doubters. Not all of them.
4. Kyler Murray, Minnesota Vikings
He is 28 years old, signing for the veteran’s minimum, competing for a starting job against a 2024 top-ten draft pick, carrying seven seasons, zero playoff wins, one torn ACL, and a franchise that eventually stopped believing in him in a Minnesota winter. The Cardinals went 4-13 in 2025 after a foot injury against the Titans ended his season at five games. Five games. 68.3% completions, 962 yards, 6 touchdowns, 3 interceptions — tantalizing enough to make the injury feel genuinely cruel — before Jacoby Brissett finished what was already a lost season.
Now he has Justin Jefferson. The kind of receiver he never had in the desert. The kind who makes quarterbacks look like different people, which is precisely what Minnesota is gambling on — a Sam Darnold 2024 renaissance, a talent rehabilitated by circumstance, a castoff who needed better company all along. He must first beat out J.J. McCarthy in training camp, which the smart money says he does. Then comes the harder part: staying healthy long enough to prove that the talent was always real and the circumstances were always the problem.
Continue reading...
