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Is Dart more than just hype?
Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart has steadily risen over the course of the Draft process, but has also been a very divisive figure in the quarterback discussion.
He was largely dismissed as a “system” quarterback for much of his time at Ole Miss, and largely overlooked in 2024 despite a record-setting senior year.
Dart started to get some recognition as Ole Miss climbed into the Top 10 and the College Football Playoff discussion, but his profile sank again with the loss to Florida. By the end of the week of practice prior to the 2025 Reese’s
Senior Bowl, we began to hear chatter that Dart could be the second quarterback behind Cam Ward on some teams’ boards.
The stigma around Dart remained, however, and those reports have been met with skepticism from some corners. It’s often framed as being “insane” to think that Dart could leapfrog Shedeur Sanders and be some teams’ “QB2”. Those rebuttals are often presented axiomatically, as though Dart’s inferiority is self-evident and doesn’t need explanation.
Dart is frequently dismissed in some circles as the beneficiary of pre-draft hype.
It’s always possible that there’s some unwarranted elevation due to recency bias. it’s also frequently the case that players “rising” up public draft boards are actually a case of those of us on the outside catching up to NFL scouts,
So rather than just accept “people are saying” as a profile for Dart, we’ll actually dig into him and see for ourselves whether his rise is warranted.
Background
Dart is in the relatively rare position of being a highly experienced quarterback (he has 45 games under his belt), while also being the youngest quarterback in his draft class. Dart was born on May 13th, 2003, making him just 21 at the time of the draft.
In what seems to be a familiar pattern for Dart, he wasn’t recruited in high school up until his senior year. He had no Power 5 (now Power 4) offers and was unranked as a recruit until his final season, when he finally forced recruiting services to take note.
Dart finished his final year of high school at Corner Canyon High School with a total of 5,886 yards and 79 touchdowns (4,691 yards and 67 touchdowns passing, and 1,195 yards and 12 touchdowns rushing) – to just four interceptions.
His absurd production earned him recognition as the Gatorade Football Player of The Year and the MaxPreps National Player of The Year.
It also earned him a ranking by recruiting services. Dart was ESPN’s top recruit in the state of Utah, their third-ranked “Pocket Passer”, and 19th overall recruit. He was Rivals 2nd ranked player in Utah, 5th ranked quarterback, and 107th ranked recruit.
Dart ultimately committed to, and enrolled at, USC in 2021. He would only spend one year there before transferring to Ole Miss in 2022 following the arrival of Lincoln Riley and Caleb Williams from Oklahoma.
Measurables
Kent Lee Platte |
RAS.football
Dart has solid size for the quarterback position at 6-foot 2 ¼ inches, 223 pounds. He doesn’t quite have ideal height, however his build is a common one among NFL quarterbacks, and is shared by players like Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes.
He has good thickness in his lower body, which translates as both a passer and runner. He’s able to generate power from the ground up to drive the ball, shake off poor tackle attempts in the backfield, and run through defenders at the second or third level when necessary.
We don’t have numbers to quantify Dart’s athleticism, but his tape shows obvious (though not elite) athleticism.
Tape Viewed
- vs. Alabama (2022), vs. Alabama (2023), vs. LSU (2023), vs. Penn State (2023)
- vs. Kentucky (2024), vs. LSU (2024), vs. Georgia (2024), vs. Florida (2024)
Intangibles
So much of what we focus on with quarterbacks is tangible — things like their height, weight, 40 time, or their ball velocity. However much of what makes a quarterback successful is intangible.
We can’t really measure things like mental processing, football IQ, leadership, or competitiveness, but we can see their effects.
Football IQ and Mental processing
This is going to be an area of debate league-wide around draft rooms and fan bases. One of the most common criticisms of Dart is the offense in which he plays, and whether he’s prepared to execute an NFL offense.
It is absolutely true that Lane Kiffin calls a wide-open offense that’s only generally related to an NFL offense. However, it isn’t quite as simplistic as it appears at first blush and has actually evolved over the years with Dart’s development.
When Dart first arrived in Ole Miss back in 2022, the offense was relatively run-heavy and full of the usual Spread Offense elements. It used RPOs and alignment to create space and isolate individual receivers to scheme separation. There was little mental load and Dart wasn’t really asked to read the defense nor make calls at the line of scrimmage.
Three years later, the shape of the offense was generally the same, but with added complexity and wrinkles. In 2024, the Ole Miss offense employed more pre-snap movement, allowing Dart to read the defense as well as make adjustments at the line of scrimmage. It also featured more progression reads and asked Dart to read the full field. Where his helmet rarely shifted between reads as a sophomore, Dart was actively working through full-field progressions as a senior. Dart also showed improved eye discipline and an understanding of how to use his body language to manipulate defenders.
As a senior, Dart also showed evidence of relatively advanced processing within the structure of Kiffin’s scheme. The scheme often used concepts with multiple receivers at different levels in the same general area of the field. Dart seemed to use the tempo of his progression reads to force indecision in his opponents. There were multiple incidents of him seeming to focus on the underneath receiver, holding the corner and safety, and creating room for the deeper receiver.
And while Kiffin’s scheme does create open space for receivers, Dart grew in his ability to throw with anticipation and lead his receivers to the open field. In that way it incorporated some of the open-ended post-snap option aspects of the Run ‘n Shoot offense and demanded the quarterback and receivers be on the same page. That wouldn’t have been possible if Dart didn’t improve in his ability to diagnose the defense in both the pre and post-snap phases of the play.
Of course, Dart wasn’t perfect and still has room for growth as a processor. He can occasionally lock on to receivers (or spots) or be a bit slow to commit to a throw. There are instances where he needs to move to his hot route or check-down sooner, and takes undue pressure (or hits) because of it.
He also has a gunslinger’s mentality and can be prone to bouts of over-aggressiveness. Dart seems to have supreme trust in his arm and a willingness to give his receivers a chance to make a play – sometimes to a fault. There were instances throughout his tape of him losing track of a defender down the field or failing to recognize a post-snap defensive rotation.
While his occasional over-aggression, or failing to recognize pressure, didn’t always bite him, it did often enough. In particular, they likely cost Ole Miss a spot in the expanded College Football Playoffs.
His aggression is, in and of itself, not a bad thing. But his willingness to test defenses while occasionally losing track of defenders is an area in which he’ll need to continue to improve.
Leadership and Toughness
Dart has always been well-regarded for both his leadership and his toughness as a player.
Starting with his toughness, Dart has endured multiple injuries throughout his college career. He had surgery on a torn meniscus in 2021, a shoulder injury in 2023, and suffered a sprained ankle late in 2024 – he also played, or attempted to play, through each of the injuries. He suffered the meniscus injury in his first game for USC, throwing for 391 yards and 4 touchdowns despite playing the second half with a heavy sleeve on his knee. Despite being able to finish the game, Dart needed surgery which ultimately ended his season.
Dart suffered the shoulder injury after taking a hit from an opponents’ helmet and then a hard landing. While he left the game, he was back the following week and didn’t miss any games. Finally, he suffered a sprained ankle when being sacked by Georgia, but returned to the game.
He has also been well-regarded for his demeanor both on and off the field. He’s undeniably competitive, but operates with a quiet, calm confidence that seems to be magnetic for his teammates. It’s also served as a counterpoint to Kiffin, who’s often described as “quirky”, “manic”, or an outright troll,
depending on who’s doing the telling.
QB coach Taylor Kelly, who started working with Dart as a sophomore, said of him at Ole Miss, “He has this aura and swagger about him that guys in the entire locker room gravitate towards. And that’s a very special, unique thing to have at the quarterback position. … He has a unique way to connect with those types of people, and I would say that’s one of his biggest attributes, is watching him lead and how his teammates respond to him.”
Former Oklahoma State star QB Spencer Sanders transferred to Ole Miss in 2023 to compete with Dart for the starting job. Receiver Jordan Watkins said that the competition only pushed him to work harder.
“I think he always knew, in the back of his mind, that this was his team, and that he was going to make sure it was his team” Watkins said. “So, I don’t think he ever really lost confidence. I think it just put more of a chip on his shoulder to where he was like, ‘Man, there’s nothing in the world that’s going to take me from that starting spot.’ … Whenever that happened, that’s what turned Jaxson Dart into Jaxson Dart.”
His leadership comes from his accountability as well as his toughness.
“Bad decision by me,” Dart said after throwing a pair of interceptions which cost his team the game against Florida. “I think the only thing I can say right now is I’m sorry. I’m sorry to my teammates, I’m sorry to my coaches, I’m sorry for the fans. Can’t lose these games. Yeah, this one’s gonna hurt for a really long time. That’s all I can really say now: I’m sorry.”
Arm Talent
Jaxson Dart’s arm is best described as very good, but not quite elite.
Dart shouldn’t be confused with the likes of Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, or Drake Maye in terms of raw arm strength and velocity. However, he isn’t far behind them and has more than enough arm strength to execute any throw he is likely to be asked to make.
He has plenty of arm strength to access all areas of the field, and there were multiple instances of him driving the ball more than 50 yards downfield with excellent accuracy and placement on tape. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise to learn that Dart is a two-sport athlete with a strong background in baseball. Seeing “baseball” in a quarterback’s background is generally a good sign and akin to seeing “wrestler” in a lineman’s biography.
When healthy, Dart’s ability to throw deep with touch, placing the ball precisely and layering it between defenders, is particularly impressive.
He has a propensity for generating big plays and is one of the most prolific deep-ball passers in all of college football, while also maintaining a high success rate and accuracy in the short-to-intermediate area of the field. He understands when to drive the ball with velocity, and when to throw with touch, timing, and anticipation.
He typically has solid and repeatable mechanics, with light, quick feet in his drops, and solid footwork at the top of his drop. Dart generally has quiet feet, but also doesn’t settle or get lazy. He’s able to flow within the pocket, subtly altering throwing lanes or creating time and space for himself. He stays on his toes well enough to sidestep or climb the pocket to avoid pressure while maintaining his balance.
He typically does a good job of aligning his feet with his target, striding into the throw and transferring his weight. He doesn’t have a particularly compact throwing motion, but it’s by no means elongated, nor is it particularly “whippy”. All told, Dart has a very smooth throwing motion that’s very repeatable. He seldom looks like he’s “muscling” the ball or has to sacrifice accuracy for power.
Dart’s arm is such that he doesn’t have to drive from the ground up to generate velocity. As mentioned above, Dart is a good athlete and he has the ability to throw on the move. He’s able to generate enough power through his core and arm to generate velocity as well as throw with reasonable accuracy when he doesn’t have a firm foundation.
That said, not being able to set his feet or stride into the throw does cause his accuracy and precision to suffer, and this was particularly true following his late-season ankle injury.
Therein lies another part of the conversation regarding his games against Georgia and Florida. Dart suffered a sprained left ankle on the first offensive series against Georgia that threatened to knock him out of the game. He was able to come back into the game after treatment, and ultimately helped Ole Miss win.
Athleticism
As mentioned above, we don’t have numbers to quantify Dart’s athleticism. However, his tape doesn’t give us any reason to doubt his athletic traits or ability to be a mobile quarterback in a modern offense.
Dart is a capable runner, though he’s better thought of as a mobile quarterback who can make defenses pay for turning their backs on him than as a true “dual threat”. He’s able to execute bootleg rollouts with relative ease as well as scramble to extend the play.
He doesn’t quite have elite quickness as a runner and takes a step or two in order to get up to speed, though he’s fast enough to create chunk yardage once he finds the open field. Dart does, however, have solid agility and is able to make defenders miss in the backfield or at the second level.
Dart was asked to supplement the running game at Ole Miss with Read-Option plays and designed quarterback runs. Nobody will mistake him for a scat-back, but he moves well and is a good all-around athlete. He was, generally, more effective on read-option plays, as the inherent misdirection slowed defenses enough that he was able to get up to speed.
So while Dart might not be an elite rushing threat, he’s able to do enough to force defenses to honor the possibility of a quarterback run and play true 11-on-11 football.
Projectable Stats
The use of stats and analytics is changing how we view and analyze the game of football. However, just because we have masses of data points, doesn’t mean we automatically make better decisions. Data that’s misunderstood or poorly interpreted is the same as no data at all, and distracting noise at worst.
However, there are some stats and advanced analytics that do have predictive value. Some stats, such as sack rate, are “sticky” and can follow quarterbacks from
college to the NFL, as
well as from team to team.
For our purposes, we’ll be looking at completion percentage, yards per game, sack rate and pressure to sack rate, EPA, and ESPN’s QBR. Each of those stats has a moderately strong to strong correlation coefficient between college and the NFL. None of them are definitive, but they’re another tool that can help provide a backstop to check bias as well as confirm what we did (or didn’t) see on tape. For reference, I’ll be listing their rank among top quarterback prospects in the 2025 quarterback class.
Completion percentage: 69.3 percent (2nd)
Yards per game: 329 yards (1st)
Sack rate: 6.6 percent (3rd)
Pressure to sack rate: 19.2 percent (4th)
EPA: 78.5 (4th)
QBR: 84.7 (2nd)
Dart’s statistical profile is an interesting one. His ability to rack up yardage at a prolific rate absolutely lines up with what he shows on tape. Dart excels at throwing downfield, generates big plays, and can be an artist with the ball.
While Ole Miss’ wide open “Spread ‘n Shred” offense created opportunities for big plays, Dart also executed at a high level and took advantage of those opportunities. Per
Pro Football Focus, he leads the draft class in deep yardage (1,517 yards), while also being sixth in Big Time Throw Rate (7.1 percent) and Average Depth of Target (11.9 yards downfield). That’s also while leading the class in accuracy rate and ball placement on passes 5 to 25 yards downfield (also per PFF).
The biggest area of concern in his profile is his Sack Rate and particularly his Pressure To Sack (P2S) rate. And his rates in those two areas are (at least) a bright orange flag, which lines up with his tape. Dart’s pocket presence and feel for pressure are inconsistent on tape, with some impressive plays and some very poor ones. There are instances where Dart does a great job of feeling and avoiding pressure, extending the play or finding his check-down. There are other plays, however, where he seems to be playing through a silo and is frustratingly oblivious to pressure.
In some cases those could be chalked up to trying to give his receivers time to get open. But even so, Dart needs to continue to improve in respecting his internal clock and either checking the ball down or throwing it away.
Interestingly, while Dart is criticized for his performance against top competition, his biggest red flag actually improved against his toughest opponents. Also per PFF, Dart’s Pressure To Sack rate dropped to 18.6% against Power Four competition, and dropped further still to 17.6% against his strongest opponents.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Dart’s predictive statistical profile is how he’s developed over the last three seasons. Every one of the most important stats for predicting quarterback success has improved in each season.
Every year, Dart has seen his completion percentage rise while throwing for more yards, further down the field, and throwing more touchdowns. At the same time, his interception rate and sack rate have fallen. And while the trends aren’t predictive in and of themselves, they do suggest a player who not only has upside, but is putting in the work to develop every area of his game.
Development isn’t linear and progression can happen in fits and starts. However, a year-over-year track record of development suggests that it will continue, particularly given that Dart is the youngest quarterback in the draft.
Game Tape
Georgia and Florida
Before we fully wrap up the discussion on Jaxson Dart, we need to talk about his games against Georgia and Florida.
Those two games are held up almost as a referendum on Dart and his viability as a prospect, almost to the exclusion of everything else by some. His performance in those games – and the context within them – certainly complicates his profile.
We’ve touched on elements of the games in other sections, but they do need to be discussed directly.
Three of Dart’s six interceptions came in those two games. It’s true that the first helped make the Georgia game closer than it really should have been, while the other two cost Ole Miss the game against Florida. It’s also true that those three interceptions came while Dart was playing through the ankle injury, and the injury likely contributed to them.
Dart did not drive off of his rear leg with the power he normally does, and did not fully transfer his weight to his lead (left) leg after the injury. His mechanics also changed such that he wasn’t aligning his feet with his target. That appeared to sap some of the velocity from his throws, as well as negatively impacting his accuracy. After the injury, Dart was still able to reach downfield, but his passes were softer and had a tendency to sail on him, suggesting that he was (at least in part) throwing off his back foot.
He looked better to start the Florida game, but his ability to set his feet degraded as the game wore on, particularly after his starting center left the game due to his own injury.
Dart also had multiple dropped passes in that game. While those passes were generally on target, they weren’t up to his usual standard for placement and were at the extremes of his targets’ catch radii.
His injury absolutely does not excuse the decision to throw deep down the field into triple coverage inside the two-minute warning. His ankle might have caused the ball to sail on him, but it shouldn’t have been thrown in the first place.
It might, however, explain the game-ending interception. Dart appeared to be trying to throw out of bounds, but was forced off his spot and appeared unable to transfer his weight at all, leading to a poorly-aimed arm-punt of a pass. If he was indeed trying to throw the ball away, the injury might factor into why that pass was so unlike his passes from the first six games studied – or even from the first half of that game itself.
We shouldn’t use injury as an excuse for Dart’s poor decisions at the end of the Florida game. He has definite “gunslinger” tendencies and his future team will need to weigh their appetite for the risk inherent in that mentality. They’ll also have to weigh whether trying to tamp them down would make Dart a less effective quarterback.
These two games also shouldn’t overshadow the totality of Dart’s profile. Just as his historic game against Arkansas shouldn’t be used to put him on a pedestal, his worst games shouldn’t be used to declare him “anti-clutch” or a bust. They’re a piece of the puzzle and a reason to go back to the tape, and (ideally) put him on the board, and try to find out exactly why they happened.
Final Word
So what do we make of Jaxson Dart?
His profile is, overall, impressive and it’s easy to see why some teams could view him as the second-best quarterback in the draft.
He’s the youngest passer in the class yet has started 45 games and has improved each year he’s been a starter. Dart has very good athletic traits as well as a strong and flexible arm with good mobility. He’s able to scramble as well as run the ball, and is willing to be physical and take on contact when necessary. He’s well-regarded as a leader and reportedly the requisite competitive toughness to be a starter in the NFL.
As a senior, Dart was one of the most prolific passers in college football and set multiple records for a major program – including records set by Archie and
Eli Manning. He matched the pace set by Jayden Daniels for much of the year and his predictive stats against Power 4 competition suggests that he could be on a similar level as Daniels and Bo Nix.
And yet there’s still skepticism regarding Dart.
His losses against South Carolina,
LSU, and Florida raise questions about his ability to win against top competition. Likewise, concerns regarding Lane Kiffin’s offense whether it at all prepared him for the NFL remain as well.
Ultimately, Dart is a player who’s draft stock could, and likely will, vary for each team.
Some teams could look for a quarterback with a quicker process and release. They might also be hesitant to spend a high pick on a player who might need a season on the bench to reach his ceiling. Some teams could also be concerned regarding his play at the end of the season and whether he’ll be able to translate to the NFL.
Other teams will value his athletic traits, arm strength and precision, and willingness to attack downfield. They could well view Dart as QB2 and worth a high pick, particularly if they’re willing to invest in his continued development and incorporate concepts with which he’s had success.
If a team wants to draft Dart, they’ll likely have to do so in the first round despite the risk inherent in the pick. He certainly has bust potential, though not as much as some quarterbacks in this class. However, he could also become a franchise quarterback if his future team is able to fully unlock his potential.
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