Week 11 NFL Moneyline Underdogs
Mike Randle
As we head toward the start of the 2024 NFL and fantasy football season, FTN Fantasy editor-in-chief Daniel Kelley is asking (and attempting to answer) the 100 most pressing questions in fantasy football. This is 100 Questions. Today: The Chicago Bears.
It’s not the Packers, Vikings and Lions the Bears are chasing in 2024. Not really.
It’s the Colts.
Not every team that picks first overall had the worst record the year before. This iteration of the Bears proves that. But it is true that teams that pick first overall pick do so for a reason — mostly it’s because they were the worst team the year before, but if not it’s usually because the team had some reason to feel the urge to move up to pick, and that means it had a glaring weakness.
So this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but there are only six teams since the AFL/NFL merger that have picked first overall and gone on to win double-digit games this year. Of those, only two did so after having picked a quarterback with that first overall pick. And one of those was the 2004 Chargers, who drafted Eli Manning and immediately traded him, so that hardly counts for this exercise.
That leaves us with the 2012 Colts, who drafted Andrew Luck first overall and went on to go 11-5, claim a Wild Card and play a playoff game. That’s the benchmark for the Bears to strive for. Both teams had circumstantial reasons why they were better than the typical team that drafts first overall (the Colts’ 2011 was a blip owing to a lost Peyton Manning season; the Bears were basically an average team last year that picked first overall because of a steal of a trade the year before), but Caleb Williams and the 2024 Bears will be compared to that Andrew Luck team no matter what.
The good news? If they chase down the Colts’ ghost, they’ll catch at least some of their NFC North peers as well, because an 11-win Bears team in 2024 would be a playoff team as well.
The Questions
20. How Valuable Is Caleb Williams?
21. Rome Odunze — Factor or Afterthought?
22. Did the Bears Pounce on Their Workhorse?
100 Questions for 2024: Chicago Bears
How Valuable Is Caleb Williams?
You might need to head back to the intro page to this series for the first part of my answer to this one, but as a fantasy asset, Caleb Williams has slipped down to underrated status. The drafting community has certain blind spots, and one of them is an insistence on a rookie proving he can hack it before buying in, doubly so for quarterbacks. Rookie quarterbacks who come in and start right away are doing more in fantasy than ever before. That doesn’t mean they are infallible, of course (just look at Bryce Young a year ago), but the rookies who are seen as locked-in fantasy assets right away and fall flat (so not guys like Young — he was always seen as a question mark — but the Cam Newtons, Andrew Lucks and, yes, Caleb Williamses of the world) are readier to do it sooner than ever before.
I wouldn’t hesitate to take Williams as a back-end starter, QB10-QB12 range, That’s a few spots ahead of his current QB14 ADP. What I would do, though, if I drafted Williams, would be to pair him with someone like Matthew Stafford or Kirk Cousins, a theoretically safe choice. But I’d be starting Williams to open the season, and I’d only pivot to the theoretical “safe” option if Williams forced my hand.
Rome Odunze — Factor or Afterthought?
Rome Odunze was the third wide receiver off the board in this year’s draft, ninth overall. “Third” also happens to be his spot in the pecking order in the Bears’ receiver room, with veterans DJ Moore and Keenan Allen both slotting in ahead of the high-profile rookie. But also, Odunze received plenty of buzz in the draft process that he could actually be the top pass-catcher in his class. Can that profile as a rookie really be stuck as little more than a WR handcuff behind his teammates?
It’s a tough needle to thread … and Odunze has kind of done so. In our FTN Fantasy projections, our own Jeff Ratcliffe has Odunze slated for more than 100 targets (106.2) and over 800 yards (824.9), but then the problem is that the Bears’ offense is only projected for in the low 20s in passing touchdowns. If that ends up being the case, even with very good yardage, it’s going to be hard for Odunze to score enough to be worth it, even if the target total gives him a high floor. In that instance, he’s maybe worth a draft pick as a fill-in who has upside, given his pedigree and Allen’s age and injury history.
But! Look up a couple inches at what I wrote about Caleb Williams. Think back to the young quarterbacks who have come in and taken control right away. No, that’s not a guarantee of success for the Bears, or Williams or specifically Odunze. But the upside there — the upside that Williams doesn’t throw 23 touchdowns but instead gets to the low- to mid-30s — takes Odunze from a “you can draft him as an insurance policy” play to one of the better after-you’ve-filled-out-your-starters picks out there.
Did the Bears Pounce on Their Workhorse?
The free agency legal tampering period opened at noon March 11. At exactly noon March 11, this is what Adam Schefter tweeted:
Within 15 minutes (I can’t actually name the time, because every single reporter made a typo in their tweet and had to edit it and stupid Twitter won’t show “originally posted” time, just “last edited” time), Ian Rapoport said:
What does that say? It says that the Bears were ready to pounce, and giving him $15.3 million guaranteed over three years is enough money that they’re at least planning something for him. But all of that said, this is a team that still has Khalil Herbert (who bested Swift in PFF rushing grade and yards per carry last year) and Roschon Johnson (who had a bit of failure to launch as a rookie but still profiles as a bruiser), and of course has that elite trio of receivers along with TEs Cole Kmet and Gerald Everett. And he’s now four years into a career where his best fantasy finish in PPR (which, remember, he’s supposed to be a particularly good receiver) is RB15. His yards per attempt dropped by almost a yard (5.5 to 4.6) last year, his yards per route run hit a career-low 0.8, and he has exactly one career season with more than 620 rushing yards. You can probably figure out my thoughts on Swift as a fantasy asset pretty well based on that paragraph, but let’s spell it out: The only thing telling you D’Andre Swift is worth his current ADP (RB21) is the speed with which the Bears grabbed him in free agency. Everything else is screaming “mediocre fantasy asset.” Some of that is a comment on Swift’s underlying skill set, some of it is more a matter of the number of mouths to feed in Chicago, but regardless, at his current price, he’s one of my “not with a 10-foot pole” guys of 2024.
