Fields Yates released his latest mock draft on ESPN, and this one spanned the first two rounds. Because of the trade to acquire DK Metcalf, that still just means one pick for the Steelers and he didn’t have them trading back up. The current situation puts a lot of pressure for that first-round pick to be a hit, but that didn’t stop Yates from making a controversial move for the Steelers. At No. 21 overall, he had them selecting Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart.
“While it seems the Steelers are the most likely landing spot for Aaron Rodgers, signing him would not preclude them from looking toward the future at quarterback,” Yates wrote. “But Pittsburgh hasn’t even signed Rodgers yet, meaning Mason Rudolph is the current QB1. Let’s lock up another signal-caller for the Steelers here.
“Dart broke Eli Manning’s school record at Ole Miss for passing yards (4,279) and led the FBS in yards per attempt (10.8) in 2024. He has good mobility and accuracy, throwing 52 touchdowns and 11 interceptions over the past two seasons.”
Lane Kiffin’s quarterbacks haven’t had a great track record of translating their college production to the next level, and opinions are all over the place on Dart. Over the last month, the media consensus seems to be that he’ll end up getting selected in the first round, but there are plenty of talent evaluators who have him as a Day 2 or even early Day 3 prospect.
Our Alex Kozora gave him a fifth-round grade, for example. Here’s a snippet of Kozora’s conclusion after watching five games of Dart’s 2023 and 2024 seasons.
“Overall, Dart does a lot of things well. And kudos to him for being tough and a gamer. He’ll earn the respect of a locker room in no time. But there aren’t a lot of things he does great. Not much that wows. Everything about his game is Bs, not As,” Kozora wrote while adding that Dart gives Kenny Pickett vibes on tape.
It’s one thing to roll the dice on Pickett in 2022 as the first quarterback off the board, but to take presumably the third quarterback in what is viewed as a weak quarterback class doesn’t seem like a winning strategy.
When I look at Dart’s college career, I am left wondering how that Ole Miss program wasn’t able to make the playoffs and even compete for a national championship. If you have a first-round caliber quarterback on a roster absolutely loaded with high-end draft prospects, that should be the recipe for a deep run. Instead, the Rebels lost to Kentucky, LSU and Florida. Dart completed 66 of his 110 pass attempts (60 percent) for 868 yards, four TDs and three INTs in those three losses.
For what it’s worth, the Steelers showed interest in Dart at the NFL Combine and have a reported pre-draft meeting with him scheduled. They have been doing their due diligence on several of the quarterbacks this year, but it appears they do have particular interest in Dart at this point in the process.
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