Why Jaxson Dart should be a top-15 player in the 2025 NFL Draft class

• Jaxson Dart might be the most polarizing player in the 2025 draft class: Opinions on Dart vary more than any prospect in recent memory. PFF’s Trevor Sikkema ranked him 126th overall and QB7 before the 2025 NFL Draft Scouting Combine, while the consensus big board has him at 37th overall and QB3. Some draft analysts who have not yet released their rankings even have a first-round grade on Dart.

• A solid statistical profile: Among the top 10 quarterbacks on the PFF Big Board, Jaxson Dart ranked first in passing grade, first in accuracy rate (based on ball placement) on throws between 5 and 25 yards downfield, and second in success rate under pressure (behind Will Howard) over the entire 2024 season.

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Player evaluation is an inexact science. Teams and draft analysts alike get it wrong more often than not. If there’s one certainty about the NFL draft, it’s that there will be more misses than hits.

Even at the quarterback position — where more data and information are available than ever before — identifying the good from the bad remains a challenge.

For every John Elway, Peyton Manning, and Andrew Luck, there’s a Jeff George, Drew Bledsoe, Tim Couch, David Carr, Sam Bradford and Jameis Winston. All of these quarterbacks were consensus top prospects — some even labeled as generational talents — but their careers took vastly different paths.

Even in recent years, we’ve seen how the draft community — NFL teams and expert analysts alike — can miss at the top of the draft. Patrick Mahomes was selected after Mitch Trubisky. Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson were drafted after Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold. And while their careers still need time to unfold, C.J. Stroud and Jayden Daniels were taken after Bryce Young and Caleb Williams, respectively.

This quarterback class faces heavy scrutiny, with no clear consensus on who the top option is. Like in 2022 — when only one quarterback went in the first round, and Brock Purdy became the best of the group as the final pick — the 2025 QB class is viewed as weak.

I blend data and film to evaluate players. At quarterback, data can provide valuable insight, but if a player lacks the arm strength needed for the NFL, the numbers may not matter. Likewise, a quarterback might check every box on film—big arm, ideal size, good mobility—but if his grading profile and data are poor, he may be overrated due to certain biases.

Of course, there are outliers in both directions — Josh Allen had an extremely poor data profile, while Colt McCoy graded well but lacked the physical tools to succeed at the NFL level. The key is recognizing these outliers rather than “trying to find the next Josh Allen.”

Generally, successful NFL quarterbacks fit certain analytical criteria, and that’s what we aim to identify in this class.

The Case for Jaxson Dart

Jaxson Dart might be the most polarizing player in the 2025 draft class. Opinions on him vary more than any prospect in recent memory. PFF’s Trevor Sikkema ranked him 126th and QB7 before the 2025 NFL Draft Scouting Combine, while the consensus big board has him at 37th overall and QB3. Some draft analysts who have not yet released their rankings even have a first-round grade on Dart.

As for me, I recently stated that Dart is a top-15 prospect in this class. Let me explain why — starting with the data.

A year ago, I ranked the QBs in last year’s class purely from a data perspective. The top three? Bo Nix, J.J. McCarthy and Jayden Daniels. And while we were robbed of seeing what McCarthy could do as a rookie, Nix and Daniels were clearly the two best rookie quarterbacks in 2024.

This year, Jaxson Dart stands out as the top quarterback from a data standpoint. When analyzing the numbers, I focus on sack avoidance, accuracy and performance under pressure — placing more weight on their production against Power Four opponents. Overall grades and stats matter, but to a lesser extent.

Among the top 10 quarterbacks on the PFF Big Board, Jaxson Dart ranked first in passing grade, first in accuracy rate (based on ball placement) on throws between 5 and 25 yards downfield, and second in success rate under pressure (behind Will Howard) over the entire 2024 season.

When adjusting for Power Four competition, Dart finished second in passing grade (behind Cam Ward), third in accuracy rate (Dillon Gabriel was first, Shedeur Sanders second), and remained second in success rate under pressure (trailing only Howard).

Ranking behind Howard in success rate under pressure might seem concerning, but Ohio State’s loaded roster gave him easy outlets when under duress. Most other quarterbacks in this class didn’t have the same caliber of playmakers at their disposal.

Jaxson Dart: Stable metrics from 2024

If there’s a concern with Dart’s data profile, it’s his pressure-to-sack rate. He took a sack on 18.6% of his pressured dropbacks last season—the third-worst mark among the top 10 quarterbacks. However, that number actually improved against tougher competition, dropping to 17.6%, which ranked fifth best in the class.

Dart isn’t a game-breaking runner, but he’s athletic enough to scramble for first downs and make defenders miss. He averaged 0.24 forced missed tackles per run, the second-best rate in the class, and that number improved to 0.26 against Power Four opponents.

He also led the class with 25 explosive runs against Power Four competition —an impressive feat considering Jalen Milroe, an elite athlete at the position, was actually less efficient per run than Dart.

Is Dart’s analytical profile as strong as the top three quarterbacks from last year’s class? No—but he would rank fourth among them, which would still place him inside the top 12 of last year’s draft if selections were made purely based on numbers.

Of course, all this data is valuable, but it means little if the film evaluation doesn’t match. Even this generation’s best quarterback didn’t have an elite statistical profile. The reason I was high on him as a prospect wasn’t just the numbers—it was what I saw on film. Patrick Mahomes had a solid data and grading profile, but it didn’t necessarily indicate an all-time great was about to enter the NFL.

Dart is not Mahomes as a prospect, let me be crystal clear about that. Nor is he Jayden Daniels or Joe Burrow. From a passing standpoint, he actually is more similar to Daniels than you might think, only with a tad more zip on his throws, while his athleticism is on par with Bo Nix’s. 

Dart can pepper the field with velocity and is accurate enough off-platform to alter his arm angle to complete passes. He possesses good pocket movement and spatial awareness to find open receivers when the play breaks down.

The biggest question surrounding Dart is the system he played in at Ole Miss. While it incorporates some NFL concepts, it also manufactures deep and intermediate shots with limited full-field read progressions. He’ll need to learn an NFL playbook and develop his game from under center.

However, I don’t put much weight into the system factor because most college offenses differ significantly from the NFL. Take Mahomes, for example—before him, no quarterback from the Air Raid system had ever succeeded in the NFL. Until he did.

Scout the player, not the system. If a quarterback can play, he’ll find a way to succeed.

Dart isn’t a perfect prospect, nor is he my top quarterback in this class, but he’s a very good one — and I believe many are overlooking him.

I expect the draft community to come around on Dart in the next two months. Don’t be surprised if his name is called early on April 24.