Joe Starkey: Steelers will regret bypassing Jaxson Dart, who went 4 picks later

Joe Starkey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Apr 26, 2025

Published in Football

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PITTSBURGH — Mock the New York Giants all you like. They deserve it. But they have won a playoff game more recently than the Steelers — who haven’t even been competitive in one in nearly a decade — and they made the pick the Steelers needed to make Thursday night.

The Giants got Jaxson Dart. The Steelers did not.

The Giants now have a potential franchise quarterback. The Steelers do not.

Don’t get me wrong. The Steelers made a nice pick in Oregon defensive lineman Derrick Harmon. There is nothing wrong with adding a possibly destructive player along the defensive front. They needed one.

But nothing really matters if you don’t have a quarterback, and depending on how things shake out with the rest of the draft — may I interest anyone in Shedeur Sanders or Jalen Milroe? — the Steelers seem woefully shorthanded at the most important position in sports. Their quarterback room consists of Mason Rudolph and Skylar Thompson, as they wait for a declining, 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers to make up his mind on whether he's too busy to play football or not.

I’m betting Rodgers will be here. Maybe he was waiting to see if the Steelers drafted a quarterback early. But unless they still have a move in them here, it looks like the plan is to draft a quarterback next year, when the quarterback class allegedly will be superior to this one and when the Steelers might have the assets to move into the top 10 to get one.

We’ll see.

In the meantime, some pretty sharp people around here are big Dart fans.

Ben Roethlisberger clearly sees a little of himself in the 6-foot-2, 230-pound Dart. On his “Footbahlin’ ” podcast, Roethlisberger said he “really likes” Dart and praised him for his “gunslinger mentality,” his running ability, his toughness and his creativity.

“There’s just something there,” Roethlisberger said. “Man, he can just make the ugly look good.”

Jack Ham, the legendary Steelers linebacker and longtime Penn State football analyst, told me he is “a fan of Jaxson Dart” and labels Dart an “outstanding” player. Ham would have endorsed the pick.

You can also find some big Dart fans in the analytics community. John Kosko is a former Kansas safety who works for Pro Football Focus. He wrote that Dart led this quarterback class with 25 explosive runs against Power Four competition and added this: “Among the top 10 quarterbacks on the PFF Big Board, Dart ranked first in passing grade, first in accuracy rate on throws between 5 and 25 yards downfield, and second in success rate under pressure (behind Will Howard) over the entire 2024 season.”

Giants coach Brian Daboll clearly coveted Dart and after trading into the 25th spot to get him left the first round with both Dart and Penn State stud Abdul Carter. That’s a pretty good night.

True, Daboll hasn’t exactly made people forget Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin since he took the Giants job, but he has an impressive history with quarterbacks — and it wasn’t his fault he inherited Daniel Jones in New York.

Working under Nick Saban at Alabama, Daboll helped the Crimson Tide win a national title and helped to develop Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa. He then went to Buffalo and was credited with helping to refine the raw talent that was Josh Allen.

“He's meant so much to me,” Allen told reporters after Daboll left Buffalo. "When you look at the grand scheme of things in terms of football and how to handle being a quarterback in this league, relying on the knowledge he has and the guys he's been around in his career, I spent a lot of time with him.”

So yes, I’d trust Daboll over Mike Tomlin and Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith on quarterbacks. Tomlin has completely whiffed on the Roethlisberger succession plan, going 0 for 5 so far and now waiting on Rodgers. When Smith was coaching the Atlanta Falcons, he handed the franchise keys to Desmond Ridder and brought in Marcus Mariota.

To repeat a line that has been used in this space often, the Steelers have tons of needs but really only one: a franchise quarterback. And until they find one, they need to keep swinging. Maybe they’ll be proven right by waiting a year.

I'm betting Jaxson Dart makes them regret this night for a long, long time.

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