Ranking the NFC North Quarterbacks: Is there a New King in the North?

The 2026 NFL season is still months away, but with the first day of free agency now two months behind us and the 2026 NFL draft now over, every team's roster is pretty much set. There will certainly be some surprises on the fringes of depth charts once teams are forced to pare down to 53 active players, but we have a good idea of who will be starting in September.

That makes this a perfect time to compare the four teams in the NFC North, position by position, and determine who will have the best groups once football is played again. We'll examine every position group in its own post, but let's start with the most important of all: quarterbacks.

Caleb Williams' breakout season in 2025 gave Chicago Bears fans a kind of hope they haven't felt in years, or even decades. Even longtime doubters of the Bears, such as NFL analyst Colin Cowherd, see a Super Bowl ceiling for the Bears in 2026, and that's thanks in large part to Williams looking like a budding superstar at quarterback. But where does he rank among his NFC North peers? Let's dive in.

For this position group only, I won't consider any depth players in my rankings. Backup quarterbacks only play when the starter is out, and it usually changes their team's entire game plan. So I don't think it's particularly relevant to ponder whether Tyson Bagent or Kyle McCord could come into the middle of a game and pilot their team to victory.

4. Kyler Murray - Minnesota Vikings

I'm actually higher on most than the Vikings' signing of Kyler Murray in free agency. His stint in Arizona ended badly, but we just saw head coach Kevin O'Connell turn Sam Darnold, who was for years considered a huge bust, into a star quarterback, who is now a Super Bowl champion. Who's to say he can't do the same with a quarterback that, in my opinion, is far more talented than Darnold?

However, that's still an unknown. Anything could happen this year, and Murray's biggest flaws, namely what was reportedly a substandard work ethic, may not be fixable. For that reason, he has to start at the bottom, with the caveat that he could soon rocket up these standings. And even if he somehow doesn't win the starting QB job in training camp, the alternative is J.J. McCarthy, who would also rank at the bottom.

3. Jared Goff - Detroit Lions

Picking last place was easy, but now things get difficult. There's really not much daylight between the other three NFC North quarterbacks, and most of it comes down to minor preferences. For me, that lands Goff at No. 3. He underwent a bit of a career renaissance himself when Ben Johnson joined the Lions, and he's a five-time Pro Bowler, but this ranking is about the future, not the past.

Looking forward, it's hard to be excited about Goff's ceiling. He'll be going through his third offensive coordinator in as many years. He's already on the wrong side of 30, and he was never a mobile quarterback even in his youth. That's a big problem for a Detroit team that has seen its once-dominant offensive line fall apart.

This is not to say that I think Goff is a bad quarterback. He's still good, very good on his best days. But I can't confidently take him over the massive, sky-high upside of the next two quarterbacks.

2. Jordan Love - Green Bay Packers

When Love is on, he genuinely looks like Green Bay's third-consecutive Hall of Fame quarterback. The problem is the times that he's on are broken up by some of the most head-scratching quarterback play that you'll see in the NFL. On one play, he'll rip an absolute laser over the middle of the field and fit the ball into a mailbox-sized window. Next, he'll toss a half-hearted lob into the air while hopping off of his back foot. He'll show up and show out for a dominant first half, then quietly disappear in a losing effort, as he did in the Bears' triumphant Wild Card victory over the Packers.

He's going to be in Green Bay for as long as he wants to be, that much is clear. But it's equally clear that Green Bay's run of Hall of Fame quarterbacks is over. Love is going into his seventh NFL season, his fourth as a starter, and it's reasonable to say that we've already seen him at his peak: a very good player who falls just short of that elite tier of quarterbacks. Almost any NFL team would love to have Love as their QB1 to build around, but there's one other NFC North quarterback who does have a Hall of Fame ceiling, and he takes the top spot in our rankings.

1. Caleb Williams - Chicago Bears

When Caleb Williams was drafted by the Bears with the first overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft, he entered the league with expectations to be the best quarterback drafted first overall since Andrew Luck, and after a rough rookie season, he's now on track to meet, and potentially exceed, that hype. Williams led the Bears through their most successful season in fifteen years, culminating in a Wild Card victory over the Packers, and he did it with style.

Williams earned the nickname Iceman from his teammates and the fans as he snatched victory from the jaws of defeat time and time again. He tied the great Peyton Manning for most fourth-quarter comeback wins in a season by a quarterback younger than 25 years old at six, and added a seventh in the postseason. He very nearly made it eight when he forced overtime with the wildest throw of the year against the L.A. Rams in the Divisional round.

Simply put, the ceiling on Williams' potential in this league has no limit. If he can take the same kind of developmental step forward in 2026 as he did in 2025, not only will he cement his status as the best quarterback in the NFC North, but he'll rival the great Patrick Mahomes for the best quarterback in the NFL.

Sign Up For the Bears Daily Digest - OnSI’s Free Chicago Bears Newsletter

Add us as a preferred source on Google