There’s one unexpected name you’re hearing a lot leading up to the NFL Draft: Jaxson Dart. The Ole Miss quarterback is quickly becoming the biggest benefactor of silly season, with Dart being a mediocre player, entering a shallow pool of prospects, and now fully in “fake it ‘til you make it” mode.
It’s gotten so ridiculous that NFL Network’s Charles Davis now has Dart going No. 3 overall to the New York Giants in his latest mock. It’s enough to make the casual reader intrigued, and football analysts pull out their hair, scream to the heavens, and wonder what the actual hell is going on.
Brass tacks: Jaxson Dart is bad. He’s going to be bad. There’s no reason to think he’s going to be good. In any other draft he’d be a late-round pick almost nobody would think twice about. Now he’s best positioned as the magical “late-riser,” being sold as a gem — only to see him be taken later in the draft where he will be proclaimed as a “steal.”
This is a bad QB draft, a really bad one. Everyone is clamoring to find a No. 3 QB after Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders, and while that could lead to someone making a dumb decision — it shouldn’t.
The disconnect on Dart is one of the wildest things to happen to the NFL Draft in a while. Sources at both the Senior Bowl and NFL Combine told SB Nation staff that Dart was either a Day 3 pick, or didn’t have a draftable grade. The biggest reason for this is that Dart is basically a one-read quarterback. He excelled at Mississippi when his No. 1 receiver was open, but the second he needed to make a read and distribute the ball elsewhere, he struggled.
Ole Miss tends to run one-read systems, so it’s not entirely his fault — but Pro Football Focus explained the profound drop off Dart saw when his top option was covered.
“When Dart threw to his initial read, his 92.9 PFF passing grade was the second highest in the FBS. When he was forced to get off that initial read and flip to the other side of the field, his PFF passing grade dropped to 60.3, ranking 63rd in the FBS.”
Couple this with the fact he doesn’t have elite arm strength, athleticism, size — anything really, and it’s absolutely confounding that Dart is getting 1st round hype at all, let alone being sold as a Top 5 pick.
This has a very similar feeling to Will Levis in 2023. During that process Levis was routinely viewed as a late 1st round pick, going somewhere into the early second. Then the combine happened and suddenly Levis was rising astronomically, even being mocked at the No. 1 overall pick by some outlets. The biggest difference between Levis and Dart is that Levis at least had one unicorn trait: His arm.
An elite NFL arm can solve a multitude of problems if you know how to use it. Heck, Matthew Stafford has built a Hall of Fame career off this very fact. The issue is that we’ve seen mega-armed QBs hit the draft before and falter, guys like Kyle Boller, J.P. Losman, most infamously Jamarus Russell — and that’s why we’re seeing teams opt for quarterbacks who have unicorn off-platform traits over pure arm strength.
Jaxson Dart has neither.
A lot is made of Dart’s production at Mississippi, but it’s a weird argument. Don’t get me wrong, his numbers were good — but Dart wasn’t so much better than his predecessor Matt Corral that it’s worth taking him early in the 1st round when Corral was a 3rd round pick. In addition, it’s important to note that Corral is now playing for the Birmingham Stallions of the UFL, not playing on an NFL roster.
This is one of the most buyer beware stories of the 2025 NFL Draft. There is a very concerted effort to push Dart up draft boards and have people buy into this idea he’s great, but five NFL teams have told us he’s a late-round guy at best. So don’t be shocked if more people get on the “Dart in the Top 10” bandwagon, then he’s not taken until the 3rd round or later. It’s not that whoever lands him got a steal, but rather the hype was nowhere near in line with what NFL team saw.
