Caleb Williams was carted off Soldier Field on Sunday with a right hamstring, pulling up on a first-and-goal scramble with nobody within five yards of him. A hamstring is the cheapest answer to a cart ride, and Chicago exhaled Sunday night.
The season-long betting markets did not. On Kalshi, where contracts on a season's outcomes trade as prices in cents, Williams' contract to throw for 4,000 yards went from 55 percent to 1 in a single day. His 3,500-yard contract dropped 45 points. Chicago's playoff contract lost 27, the biggest fall of any team on that board, and the Bears' price to win the NFC was cut in half.
Fifty-four points is not a market hedging against a four-week absence, but one writing off the season-long number entirely.
The Contracts Tied To His Availability
| Contract | Chance now | Day's move | Cost to buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Williams 4,000+ Passing Yards | 1% | down 54 | 8¢ |
| Williams 3,500+ Passing Yards | 21% | down 45 | 83¢ |
| Chicago Makes The Playoffs | 35% | down 27 | 37¢ |
| Chicago Wins The NFC | 5% | down 5 | 4¢ |
Kalshi, read at 9:28 a.m. ET on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. A price in cents reads as a chance. Nothing here is financial advice.
The 3,500-yard row is the strangest one on the board. It shows 21 percent after a 45-point fall, but the only offer standing is 83 cents and there is no bid underneath it. That means the market has stopped quoting until somebody sees an MRI. Read the 21 as the last thing traded, not as a price you could get.
Between them, those two rows are the whole injury report. One market says the ceiling is gone. The other says nobody is willing to guess yet.
Four To Eight Weeks, By One Doctor's Read
Sports doctor Jesse Morse watched the video and called it probably a Grade 2 partial tear: "Best-case scenario, this is probably a Grade 2 partial tear," with a minimum of four weeks out and more likely six to eight. A Grade 3 tear means surgery and the season.
Bears head coach Ben Johnson gave away the hierarchy of fear in his postgame answer. "I'm actually happy it's nothing with the knee," he said, via Yahoo Sports, adding that "a hamstring could be pretty damaging as well" and that the team would know Monday.
Both ends of that range have examples to work off of. Lamar Jackson hurt his hamstring in Baltimore's Week 4 loss to Kansas City in 2025, missed three games plus the bye, and came back on Oct. 31 for 204 yards and four touchdowns. Dak Prescott's hamstring came partway off the bone in 2024, and Jerry Jones announced season-ending surgery days later: "it just means we're not going to have him the rest of the year."
The yardage contracts are, in effect, a bet on which of those two Sundays Chicago just had.
Chicago's Season Is The Bigger Market
The Bears playoff contract is where the real money sits, and it took the hardest hit on its board. Chicago went from 62 percent to 35, a 27-point fall on a day when Kansas City gained 13 and New Orleans gained 14. Nobody else on that sheet lost more than 11. The market still quotes it properly, 37 cents to buy against a 69-cent No.
The conference market did less, because it had less left to do. Chicago halved from 10 percent to 5, which drops them to the bottom of the nine NFC teams anyone is trading: San Francisco 18, the Los Angeles Rams 17, Seattle 15, Philadelphia 10, Minnesota 8, Dallas 7, Detroit 6, the New York Giants 6, Chicago 5. Minnesota, the team that just won 9-3 at Soldier Field, gained two points on the same day.
Read together, the two say the season is not over but the ceiling is gone. A playoff spot is still live at roughly a third. Everything past it is now a rounding error.
The Cruel Part
Johnson spent the offseason asking for exactly the play that hurt him. At the March 2026 owners meetings he said, "Our scramble tape was not very good, and I think that's something that Caleb can really sink in to." Williams took the assignment, telling reporters in January he could "stand in the pocket, whether that's run, whether that's scramble." He ran 77 times for 388 yards and three scores in 2025, and he got hurt scrambling with nobody within five yards of him.
The roster had no room for this type of setback either. Sports Illustrated's Iain MacMillan projected on Aug. 22 that the Bears would fall short of 2025 expectations, citing the loss of DJ Moore, the retirement of center Drew Dalman, a harder schedule and Williams ranking 20th in adjusted EPA per play.
What To Watch
Monday's imaging, an injured reserve decision, and how Tyson Bagent handles full-time starter duties. Williams' 3,500-yard contract cannot be priced until the first of those lands, which is why it has no bid this morning. The playoff line is the one to watch after that, because it is the only market on this list deep enough to move on news rather than on the absence of it.
About The Numbers
Kalshi is a prediction market, where people buy and sell contracts tied to an outcome, and a price in cents reads as a chance: 35 cents is roughly a 35 percent chance. "Cost to buy" is the ask and "best bid" is what someone will pay you for it; when there is no bid, you own a position you cannot sell. Williams' yardage contracts settle on his 2026-27 regular-season passing total. All prices were read at 9:28 a.m. ET on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, and they move all day. The per-game yardage figures are my arithmetic on a 17-game season.
