2026 NFL quarterback projections: Stats, rankings - ESPN

The 2026 NFL draft class will test the patience of all but one quarterback-needy team. I wrote in last year's article that the 2025 class was less heralded than 2024, and such teams might have to wait until 2026 for their quarterback of the future. But 2026 has arrived, and it resembles 2025 more than 2024. The Las Vegas Raiders will almost certainly select reigning Heisman Trophy winner and national champion Fernando Mendoza with the No. 1 pick, but there is a steep drop-off in the remaining quarterbacks' projections.

The problem is that despite the lack of obvious solutions in the draft, the New York Jets, Arizona Cardinals, Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers all have varying degrees of quarterback uncertainty. So will a general manager feeling the pressure to draft a franchise quarterback reach into the first round to select a prospect such as Ty Simpson? In recent years, we have seen a trend of riskier prospects getting drafted highly because of the quarterback position's importance.

But this year also marks a new trend: Prospects returning to school because NIL (name, image and likeness) money makes it financially feasible to do so. As such, the real story might be the quarterbacks not in this year's class, such as Dante Moore (who might have been the No. 2 pick) and Arch Manning. Given that they are likely to come out next year, will general managers show patience and wait for 2027?

• Which WRs have the best Playmaker scores?
• Which RBs have the best BackCAST scores?
• Which Edges have the best SackSEER scores?
• Which QBs have the best QBASE 2.0 scores?

With that background, we present this year's QBASE 2.0 projections for 2026. QBASE 2.0 is a combination of Andrew Healy's (2015) original QBASE model and