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Jaxson Dart Fantasy Prediction 2026: QB1 Upside at a Price I Won’t Pay
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- Jaxson Dart Fantasy Prediction 2026: QB1 Upside at a Price I Won’t Pay
Jaxson Dart Fantasy Prediction 2026:
Jaxson Dart enters his second NFL season with the New York Giants carrying immense fantasy upside after a highly productive rookie campaign. Last season, Dart finished as a top-12 fantasy QB1 in the majority of his full games, proving he can already be a reliable weekly starter for fantasy managers in a year where the injury bug couldn't be avoided.
Should You Draft Jaxson Dart in Fantasy Football?
Dart's ADP sits at 89.2 in PFN's Free Fantasy Mock Draft Simulator . His positional rank for me and my colleague Kyle Soppe, our PFN consensus rank, is QB9. We have him projected at 18.13 fantasy points per game.
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It's always tricky evaluating quarterbacks, because the player himself has to be juxtaposed with the overall philosophy on drafting quarterbacks. But we'll start with Dart and why I really like him in general this season. I don't understand his positional ADP. It doesn't make any sense. Why would anybody be fading Dart?
Yes, there were concerns about injury. He's pretty reckless when he runs, and the Giants coaches have reportedly been struggling to get him to slide. He would do well to not chase those extra 3 or 4 yards. It's more important that he protect himself. But we can't be scared of injuries in general in fantasy football. We need to draft the best players.
Dart proved last year that he has elite QB1 upside. He had 7 QB1 finishes as a rookie, and he did this with no Malik Nabers, with Cam Skattebo going down halfway through the season. He had Wan'Dale Robinson as his WR1 and then just a medley of misfits as the ancillary options, and he still was able to do it.
Dart posted 19-plus fantasy points in 9 of his 12 starts last season. If we remove the 2 games he didn't start last year, which of course we should, because we should only count his starts, he averaged 20.5 fantasy points per game. He's one of just 16 rookie QBs ever to average 17-plus points per game.
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There's so much to like about Dart's profile, and of course we know that he is able to get it done on the ground. He got 40.9% of his fantasy points via rushing, and that is the cheat code of fantasy football. We want our quarterbacks to run. Historically, we only have roughly 2 to 3 pure pocket passers in the top-12 fantasy quarterbacks every season. As a general rule, inside the top 12, we should fade pure pocket passers and draft mobile quarterbacks.
Dart is a mobile quarterback. He does not have to be actually good at playing quarterback to be good at fantasy football, and that is the key distinction here. Of course, Matthew Stafford is infinitely better at playing quarterback than Dart, but I'll take Dart well ahead of Stafford in a fantasy draft because Dart runs. Dart doesn't need to throw 46 touchdowns to be an elite QB1 like Matthew Stafford had to do last season.
Dart is undervalued as a fantasy quarterback. However, I struggle to draft him, because quarterback is just so deep this season that philosophically I don't even want to spend an 8th- or 9th-round pick on a quarterback. I want to wait until the double-digit rounds. You can get guys like Bo Nix, Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purdy, Kyler Murray, Jordan Love, and Jared Goff in rounds 10, 11, 12, sometimes even round 13.
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It's hard for me to pass up on running backs or receivers that could help me in rounds 8 or 9 to take Dart, as much as I do think he has that QB1 upside, because there are so many other quarterbacks that also have QB1 upside. So in general, Dart is a good pick this year relative to quarterbacks, but I am fading single-digit-round quarterbacks this year as a rule.
FANTASY RANKINGS: PFN's FREE Fantasy PPR, Half-PPR, and Non-PPR Rankings
Jaxson Dart's Week 1 Fantasy Outlook
Analysis provided by PFN Analyst Kyle Soppe .
Less than 12 months ago, Russell Wilson got caught up in a shootout with Dak Prescott. Dallas won 40-37 in overtime, and Wilson threw 3 touchdown passes in one of the more fun games of the season.
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Those were his only 3 TD tosses of the season.
He retired in June.
I'm not fitting Dart for a gold jacket, but I do think the current version of him with his weapons all active is better than the version of Wilson that we saw last September.
I feel good about that.
Dart had 5 straight games last season with a rush TD and had a 12+ yard run in 6 of his final 7 starts. He can be sporadic, and I don't expect the chaos to be taken out of his game. I don't want it to be taken out; that's a big part of what gives him special potential.
I was bullish on his profile before the positive Malik Nabers health reports this summer, and that just added fuel to my fire. He impressed from a fantasy point of view as a rookie … a rookie who was only able to throw 3 passes to his potentially generational WR1.
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We drafted him as a back-end QB1, and he should be even better than that to open the season. Drake Maye gets the Seahawks and Josh Allen the Texans. If Dart is going to push for a top-5 week, this is as good a spot as any.
If he goes bonkers, I'd resist the urge to sell high. Sure, the Rams are on the books next Monday night, but the Titans, Cardinals, Commanders, and Saints come after that. If your strategy is to cash in this chip, that's fine; just make sure you're maximizing the asset. The schedule toughens a bit after that, thus making a mid-October move more the angle I'd recommend.
START PREPARING: PFN's FREE Fantasy Draft Simulator
Where Dart Ranks Among 2026 Quarterbacks
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Jayden Daniels | WAS
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Joe Burrow | CIN
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Jalen Hurts | PHI
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Caleb Williams | CHI
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Justin Herbert | LAC
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Jaxson Dart | NYG
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Trevor Lawrence | JAX
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Dak Prescott | DAL
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Bo Nix | DEN
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Patrick Mahomes II | KC
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Brock Purdy | SF
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More rankings can be found in PFN's PPR Quarterback Rankings .
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network .
