Caleb Williams just made history before the 2026 NFL season even kicked off.
The Chicago Bears quarterback was officially announced as the Madden 26 cover athlete on Wednesday, becoming the first Bears player to ever land the spot. EA will release the game this summer with Williams as the face of the franchise.
“Dream come true to be on the cover of Madden!” Williams posted on social media. “See you Thursday in Chicago for the full reveal.”
The rumored finalists for the cover included New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, who just won NFL MVP. Williams won out, and the reasoning makes sense from a business standpoint. The Bears are a top-five NFL franchise in market size. Williams is young, marketable, and just played for an NFC North champion. Stafford is great but he is 38. Maye is good but he is not yet the face of the league.
Williams told the New Heights podcast that gracing the cover is a “childhood dream” for him. He also said he wants to be the first player ever to grace the cover in back-to-back years, which would put him on the all-time list with nobody else if he pulls it off.
The Bears year was the launch point. Williams threw for 3,942 yards with 27 touchdowns and seven interceptions in his second NFL season. Chicago won the NFC North, finished as the No. 2 seed in the conference, and was a play away from making the NFC title game before losing to the Rams.
For context on how big a leap year two was, Williams threw for 3,541 yards with 20 touchdowns and six interceptions as a rookie. The Bears went 5-12 that year. So in 12 months, Williams added roughly 400 passing yards and seven touchdowns while cutting interceptions and helping flip the Bears from a bottom-five team to a divisional champion. That is a top-three quarterback development story in recent NFL history.
Now comes the curse talk. The Madden cover curse is real in the sense that a lot of cover athletes have either gotten hurt or seen their performance dip the year after appearing. Patrick Mahomes was on the cover and broke his foot. Lamar Jackson was on the cover and missed games. Aaron Rodgers was on the cover and tore his Achilles in his first game with the Jets.
Williams is going to laugh off the curse talk. He should. Most of the so-called curse is just regression to the mean for guys who got the cover after monster seasons. The bigger concern for Williams in 2026 is the same one any second-year-to-third-year quarterback faces. He has to keep growing. He has to handle being the marked man. He has to manage the off-field demands that come with being on the cover of the best-selling sports game in America.
The Bears built around him this offseason. They brought in additional offensive weapons. They strengthened the offensive line in the draft. They handed Williams the keys and told him to win the NFC North again, and probably more.
Williams will be 24 when the season starts. He has played at Oklahoma and at USC, won a Heisman, and now has a Madden cover. The next box on the checklist is a playoff win. After that, it is a deep playoff run, then a Super Bowl, then a ring. Williams is on the early-career arc of a guy you can build a franchise around for 15 years.
The cover curse is not going to stop him. The pressure to live up to the cover might.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
