Week 1 always tempts the football world into doing something reckless: treating one Sunday like a full-season prophecy. That’s how you get sudden MVP fever, panic drops in the odds, and a whole lot of overreactions before the leaves have even started to turn.
Still, the first week did reshape the conversation. Josh Allen remains the man to beat, Caleb Williams made a loud entrance, and a few other quarterbacks climbed fast enough to force their way into the early MVP picture.
Williams was already hanging around the top 10 before the season, but his opening statement against the Minnesota Vikings pushed him into a different tier. He finished with 269 passing yards, a 72.4 percent completion rate and two touchdowns, good for 59 points in the game.
That performance sent his odds surging: he’s now at +700 on DraftKings, tied with Joe Burrow at +900 on BetMGM, and just behind Burrow on FanDuel, where Williams sits at +850 to Burrow’s +900. In other words, depending on the book, he’s sitting in the top three or four.
Chicago Bears reporter Kevin Fishbain laid out why the buzz around Williams isn’t just empty hype.
“It’s very strange to type the words ‘Bears’ and ‘MVP’ and ‘quarterback’ in the same paragraph and not have the word processor (remember those?) reject it, considering the league’s charter franchise has a grand total of one Most Valuable Player winner, and it was Walter Payton in 1977.”
Fishbain said. “But that’s a sign of how high Williams’ ceiling is.
“He was dialed in all summer, and you could tell he had made improvements. The operation was smoother.
His throws were crisp. He lost weight and looked even faster.
Then all he did in Week 1 was have a performance with a high completion rate and four total touchdowns … and he is capable of more. The 59-point outburst was a sign that with Ben Johnson calling plays, this offensive line protecting him and this collection of talent around him, Williams could put up some serious numbers.”
Even with that kind of debut, Williams still has the biggest roadblock sitting at the top of the board: Allen. After a classic performance against Houston, a team that had given him trouble before, the Buffalo Bills quarterback is still the favorite in the race. The Bills also look dangerous under coach Joe Brady, which only strengthens Allen’s grip on the No. 1 spot.
Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson, meanwhile, held their ground after starting the season near the top of the odds board and expectations. They didn’t get knocked around by Week 1 the way some other contenders did.
A pair of other quarterbacks made real moves upward as well. Brock Purdy and Trevor Lawrence both entered the week with roughly a 5 percent implied chance to win MVP, and each got a modest bump to around 6.25 percent.
Purdy put together a strong showing in Australia, throwing three touchdowns against the Los Angeles Rams, who seemed to be dealing with what the article described as airplane-leg syndrome.
Lawrence had one of the cleanest stat lines of the week: 18-of-23 passing for 245 yards and four touchdowns against a Browns defense that was without Myles Garrett. And when you add that to how he finished last season - 19 touchdowns and just one interception over his final six regular-season games - it’s fair to ask whether this is the start of a real rebound or just another early-season spike.
On the other side of the ledger, Justin Herbert took a tumble. The Chargers’ loss to the Arizona Cardinals was rough enough on its own, but Herbert’s line - one touchdown, one interception and three sacks - sent him from third in the odds all the way out of the top 10. That may prove to be an overreaction, but after Week 1, the market clearly wasn’t waiting around to find out.
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