This is Thor Nystrom’s NFL Draft Scouting Profile for Jaxson Dart, his third-ranked QB in the 2025 class. 

Jaxson Dart

• 6-foot-2, 226 pounds
• College: Mississippi 
• Thor’s 2025 Rank: QB3
• Comp: Gardner Minshew

Jaxson Dart won the QB1 job at Roy High School in Utah as a freshman. Dart averaged just under 2,000 passing yards per season through 2019, his junior year. The scheme made good use of his legs, but wasn’t showcasing Dart’s full capabilities as a thrower. 

Recruiting interest was scant. Several states – such as California and Illinois – canceled high school football in 2020… but not Utah. This would ultimately prove crucial for the overlooked Dart. He transferred to 6A juggernaut Corner Canyon, which had two years earlier sent Zach Wilson to BYU. One of the team captains on Corner Canyon when Dart arrived was future second-rounder Jackson Powers-Johnson.

In his one season at Corner Canyon, Dart went thermonuclear, throwing for 4,691 yards and running for 1,195 with 79 total TD. He was named Gatorade and MaxPreps National Football Player of the Year. Overnight, Dart was a consensus top-100 overall recruit.

Most big programs had already earmarked scholarships to highly-ranked quarterbacks prior to their senior seasons – precluding them from entering the last-minute Dart sweepstakes. USC was the lone blueblood that aggressively pursued Dart. And that was almost by accident. 

One of Dart’s first starts at Corner Canyon was nationally televised. Seth Doege, USC’s TE coach at the time, was home watching TV, because the Pac-12 season was postponed. Dart, a prospect Doege had never heard of, was lights-out. Doege DM’d Dart after the game, beginning USC’s recruitment. The Trojans ultimately beat out Arizona State and BYU for Dart’s services. 

Dart won USC’s QB2 job behind Kedon Slovis out of camp as a true frosh. The Trojans fired HC Clay Helton weeks into the 2021 season, in mid-September. Dart appeared in six games down the stretch for the interim staff, starting three.

On Sunday, November 28, 2021 – the day after the regular season finale – USC stunned the college football world by hiring Oklahoma HC Lincoln Riley. With QB Caleb Williams following Riley to Los Angeles, Dart had no choice but to enter the portal. He transferred to Ole Miss.

Dart started three seasons under Rebels HC Lane Kiffin, earning All-SEC First Team honors in 2024. He is one of four players in SEC history to reach 12,000 total yards, joining Georgia’s Aaron Murray, Missouri’s Drew Lock, and Florida’s Tim Tebow.

Jaxson Dart Scouting Report

Dart stands 6-foot-2 with a broad-shouldered frame and a thick build. He weighed into the Senior Bowl at 226 pounds, and had the third-longest wingspan of QBs at the Hula, Shrine, or Senior. 

Dart is a strong athlete who lived up to his dual-threat billing in the SEC. When he tucks, Dart squirts upfield into the second level with surprising burst. He’s a tough kid who would rather lower the shoulder than slide. He has played hurt. Dart could provide Bo Nix-like rushing utility at the next level.

In the pocket, Dart is clever in his subtle movements to buy more space or an extra beat to throw. He throws from multiple arm slots, with a smooth, repeatable motion, and a quick release. One area for development is footwork. Dart’s feet can have a mind of their own, a habit that can skew his accuracy down to the layups.

Dart doesn’t have a downfield howitzer – deep balls flutter on him when his eyes get bigger than his stomach. But when Dart stays within his means, he has the touch and placement to confidently challenge single coverage.

Dart’s arm shines brightest in the intermediate area. He knows how to spin it. Dart consistently beats defenders to the spot with fastballs into tight windows, big-boy NFL throws. Dart ranked No. 1 in this draft class in both intermediate and over-the-middle completion percentage.

Dart became a master of Lane Kiffin’s shotgun-spread system, the essence of which is flipping the natural order of things to force defenses to think more than offenses. Kiffin accomplishes this with untold manipulations, misdirection, eye-candy, false tells, and the like. Dart has quick hands for Kiffin’s patented RPO game. 

Kiffin simplifies things post-snap by cutting infinite options for his quarterback down to a manageable three-tiered hierarchy. Schematic garnish juices the odds of success for the initial reads. Dart went to the first one a lot. Between that, and the preponderance of quick-hitters and screens in the playbook, 34.2% of Dart’s attempts went to wide-open receivers, ranking No. 11 in the FBS, per ESPN.

Dart’s senior tape saw him snapping to the second read in his progression on time when called for consistently enough. But his third option was often tucking-and-running. Dart can, at times, be a bit mechanical in his thinking post-snap — sticking to the pre-snap script instead of taking advantage of the post-snap coverage look. 

There was a play against Alabama in 2023 that provides an example of this. Dart is at his own 41, with four receivers spread wide, two on each side. Alabama is in a nickel look, with the boundary corners in press-man. The nickel defenders, playing slightly off the line, have man responsibilities as well.

At the snap, Alabama’s pair of off-ball LBs drop a few steps and park inside the respective hashes, training their eyes on Dart – zone lurkers clogging up the middle. Alabama’s single-high safety drifts right to take away the seam from the right slot. 

Dart’s primary read is left slot WR Jordan Watkins, whose assignment is to run an in-breaker — as it turns out, right into the teeth of Alabama’s coverage. Watkins makes his break inside five yards upfield. The route doesn’t have much snap, and Watkins doesn’t quickly accelerate out of the break. He wins a half-step of freedom to dictate the angle of the slant – gaining the slightest bit of depth behind the two lurking LBs – but Alabama’s nickel defender remains in Watkins’ back pocket. 

As Watkins crosses over the middle, roughly 10 yards downfield, he is surrounded by three Alabama defenders, two of whom have been watching Dart’s eyes the entire time. With only the slightest crack of an opening, and no margin for error, Dart whizzes a Rick Vaughn fastball between the linebackers and onto Watkins’ hands in stride – there was nothing the trailing nickel could do except attempt a tackle. First down.

Dart attempted the trick-shot because it was all he saw. What he missed was his left boundary receiver having one half of the field to himself in one-on-one coverage. From the snap, Dart was locked on Watkins, and, to his credit, he converted. 

Do we credit Dart for a bonafide big-league throw that beat multiple future NFL defenders to move the chains? Do we ding him for flirting with more danger than needed by locking onto his primary read? This is the paradox of the Jaxson Dart evaluation. 

Dart has the pedigree, statistical profile, and physical tools of a first-rounder. He checks all seven of Bill Parcells’ QB criteria boxes. Dart chose Ole Miss in part because of the success departing third-rounder Matt Corral had in Kiffin’s system. Right or wrong, Corral’s subsequent failure in the NFL complicates Dart’s evaluation.