The pocket caves in. The blitzer has a clean line to the ribs. Then the quarterback is gone, rolling left, shoulders square, eyes still downfield, with a linebacker now chasing air and a chain crew already leaning forward. That is the world the 2026 NFL Draft keeps dragging scouts back into. With so much attention on the 2026 Draft best dual threat QBs, scouts are constantly evaluating both passing and rushing ability.
A few years ago, teams still talked themselves into statues with clean feet and pretty whiteboard answers. Those guys still matter. They always will. But the 2025 season is finished, the combine is over, and this class keeps forcing a tougher question: when the protection call dies, which quarterback can still make Sunday football feel unfair? Pro days and top 30 visits are still ahead, but the early shape of this group is already clear. The league wants passers who can turn a busted snap into a first down, then come back on the next series and hit the deep outbreaker on time.
That is what this board is chasing. Not empty scrambling stats. Not a quarterback who runs because the playbook has failed him. This list leans toward players whose legs change the call sheet, whose movement makes a nickel defender hesitate, and whose arm talent keeps the whole thing from turning into gimmick football by Thanksgiving.
What scouts are really fighting over
Nobody inside the NFL building calls it “dual threat” the way fans do. Coaches talk about stress. Front offices talk about survival traits. Quarterback coaches talk about recovery, which is a nicer way of saying, “What happens when the right tackle gets forklifted into the launch point?” That is the separator in this class.
Some of these quarterbacks are polished enough to play early. Others are still wild at the top of the drop. A couple feel like bar fights in shoulder pads. Still, the common thread is obvious. They can steal cheap yards, punish man coverage, and keep the offense alive after the first idea explodes. That matters more now than it did a decade ago, because defenses close space faster and force quarterbacks off their spot earlier. The runner is no longer a novelty. He is part of the emergency plan.
The board
10. Cade Klubnik
Klubnik is the argument starter. He barely makes this list, and that is exactly why he belongs at the back of it. Clemson’s 2025 rushing production from him cratered to 94 yards on 83 carries, even though he still added four rushing touchdowns, while his passing line finished at 2,943 yards and 16 scores. That is not the profile of a designed run terror. It is the profile of a passer whose 2024 mobility did not fully carry over. Still, his evaluation continues to frame him as a pocket-mobile quarterback who can evade pressure and exploit open lanes, and that is the distinction here. Klubnik is not a true run game engine. He is a scrambler of necessity with enough twitch to keep himself in the conversation.
9. Luke Altmyer
Altmyer does not play like a track athlete moonlighting at quarterback. He plays like a veteran who knows exactly when a defense has turned its back. Illinois got 3,007 passing yards, 22 touchdown passes, 242 rushing yards, and five rushing touchdowns out of him in 2025, and the passing efficiency matters just as much as the movement because he posted a 78.5 QBR and rarely let games drift into chaos. There is no wasted acting here. No fake swagger. Altmyer feels like the sort of player an NFL staff quietly falls for in April because he keeps the offense on schedule, then sneaks out the side door for 11 yards when the edge crashes too hard. He is not the scariest runner on this board. He might be one of the more adult quarterbacks on it.
8. Tommy Castellanos
Castellanos looks like trouble the second the play bends. Florida State’s 2025 season with him at the wheel produced 2,760 passing yards, 15 touchdown passes, 557 rushing yards, and nine rushing touchdowns. That part matters because it tells you how much the offense trusted him near the goal line, where space shrinks and fake toughness gets exposed. Castellanos is undersized by old-school standards, but he plays with the kind of suddenness that forces pursuit angles to lie. One moment he is boxed in. The next he is halfway to the boundary and a safety is taking the long route to embarrassment.
7. Jalon Daniels
Daniels still plays like a quarterback who hears the game a beat faster than most people around him. Kansas got 2,531 passing yards, 22 touchdowns, 404 rushing yards, and four rushing scores from him in 2025, and he did it while posting a career high in passing touchdowns. There is scar tissue in this evaluation. Injuries changed the rhythm of his college career, and that always shows up in draft rooms. Even so, the appeal has not gone anywhere. Daniels is compact, fearless, and slippery in the ugliest parts of the down. He is not the biggest arm in this class. He is one of the better escape artists in it, and that has real value when third down turns into a fistfight.
6. Jake Retzlaff
Retzlaff needed a reset, and Tulane gave him one. After winning at BYU, he transferred in July 2025 after learning he faced a suspension for violating the school’s honor code, then opened his Tulane debut with a passing touchdown and ripped off a 69-yard scoring run later in the game. By season’s end, he had thrown for 3,168 yards and 15 touchdowns while running for 634 yards and 16 rushing touchdowns. That last number is the hook. Quarterbacks do not accidentally score 16 times on the ground. Coaches design for that. Retzlaff’s game is not pretty in the polished, clinic-tape sense. It is gutsy and urgent. He runs like he expects contact, and that kind of edge tends to stick in a scout’s notebook long after the numbers blur together.
5. Cole Payton
Payton feels like the kind of prospect who gets shrugged at by people who do not watch enough FCS ball, then sneaks into a meeting room and changes minds fast. North Dakota State got 2,719 passing yards, 16 touchdowns, 777 rushing yards, and 13 rushing scores out of him in 2025. Then he followed that with a strong all-star and pre-draft circuit, earning invitations to both the Senior Bowl and the NFL Scouting Combine, where he ran 4.56 with a 40-inch vertical. That matters because his tape already showed a heavy, punishing running style and legitimate design-run value. The testing confirmed the athletic floor. Payton is built like a guy who can survive NFL contact, and his movement has more purpose than flash. Some quarterback runs look like survival. His look like policy.
4. John Mateer
Mateer does not give off calm. He gives off combustion. Oklahoma’s 2025 season with him produced 2,885 passing yards, 14 touchdowns, 431 rushing yards, and eight rushing touchdowns, a year that felt uneven at times but still showed why the talent keeps dragging evaluators back in. The larger story is his body of work. At Washington State in 2024, he erupted for 3,139 passing yards, 826 rushing yards, and 44 total touchdowns, then took that live-wire style with him into the portal. When Mateer gets loose, the game feels tilted. He does not always protect himself from bad decisions, and that will bother some staffs. Others will see a quarterback who can turn a dead rep into a stadium jolt. That sort of juice buys patience in the league.
3. Diego Pavia
Ask an SEC defensive staff about Diego Pavia and you will get the same exhausted look every time. Vanderbilt’s quarterback finished 2025 with 3,539 passing yards, 29 touchdowns, eight interceptions, 862 rushing yards, and 10 rushing touchdowns, while his 87.3 QBR ranked fourth nationally. That is not fake production in a sleepy little corner of the sport. That is top-shelf work. It also explains why he finished as the Heisman runner-up. The season had signature punches too. He threw for a school-record 484 yards against Kentucky, and Vanderbilt highlighted another game in which he put up 377 passing yards and 112 rushing yards, the first Commodore since at least 1996 to hit 300 and 100 in the same afternoon. Pavia is not graceful. He is a brawler. That is exactly why people remember him.
2. Taylen Green
No quarterback on this list makes scouts argue harder over ceiling. Arkansas got 2,714 passing yards, 19 touchdowns, 777 rushing yards, and eight rushing touchdowns from Taylen Green in 2025, and the good stuff looks ridiculous. Then the combine arrived and turned a curiosity into a dare. Green ran 4.36 in the 40, then posted a 43.5-inch vertical and an 11-foot-2 broad jump. All three registered as quarterback records in the modern combine era. That is absurd movement for a passer his size. It is also why coaches will spend the spring convincing themselves they can iron out the rest. The inconsistency is real. So is the temptation. Green is what happens when a traits bet walks into the room wearing shoulder pads and dares you to look away.
1. Haynes King
Haynes King gets the top spot because he is the cleanest marriage of production, toughness, and real quarterbacking. Georgia Tech’s 2025 season under him was loaded: 2,967 passing yards, 953 rushing yards, and 29 total touchdowns, including 15 rushing scores. The school noted that he became only the second FBS player since 1956 to hit 2,900 passing yards, 900 rushing yards, a 69 percent completion rate, and 15 rushing touchdowns in the same season. Then he backed it up in Indianapolis with an official 4.46 in the 40, and the NFL’s Next Gen Stats Draft Model gave him an athleticism score of 94, second among quarterbacks at the combine. That is the whole case in one frame. King is not just an athlete playing quarterback. He is a quarterback who can whip the game sideways. When the pocket starts to smoke, he does not flinch. He starts hunting.
What pro teams are really chasing now
The fight over this class is not really about who runs the fastest. The league can find athletes anywhere. The real question is which of these quarterbacks can carry the full burden once the field shrinks and the defense knows the throw is coming anyway.
King feels like the safest blend of movement and command. Green owns the loudest ceiling. Pavia may be the most annoying player in the class to defend for four quarters. Mateer is the one that could make a quarterbacks coach pound the table. Payton and Retzlaff have the kind of toughness that gets appreciated more once special teams coaches, backup reps, and red-zone packages enter the conversation. That is where the board sharpens.
A lot can still change before Pittsburgh. Pro days matter. Medical checks matter. Whiteboard sessions matter. Yet the core truth of this group is already sitting in plain view. NFL teams are not just shopping for passers anymore. They are shopping for damage control, for escape plans, for the one guy who can step over the wreckage of a bad snap and still move the chains. This class has a few of those. The best one might also be the quarterback who makes the whole defense feel late.
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FAQs
Q1. Who is the top dual-threat quarterback in this 2026 Draft ranking?
Haynes King leads the board because he offers the best blend of production, mobility, and quarterback command.
Q2. Which quarterback has the highest athletic ceiling in the class?
Taylen Green has the loudest raw ceiling because of his rare size-speed-explosiveness mix.
Q3. Who is the toughest quarterback to defend for a full game?
Diego Pavia has a strong case because he turns structure into chaos and keeps drives alive the hard way.
Q4. Which sleeper deserves more attention?
Cole Payton stands out as the sleeper because of his FCS production, rushing value, and strong pre-draft rise.
Q5. Why is Cade Klubnik still on the list with low rushing numbers?
He is here as a scrambler of necessity, not a true designed-run engine.
Q6. What are NFL teams really buying in this class?
They are buying recovery traits, off-script creation, and quarterbacks who can survive bad protection without losing the throw.
I’m a sports and pop culture junkie who loves the buzz of a big match and the comfort of a great story on screen. When I’m not chasing highlights and hot takes, I’m planning the next trip, hunting for underrated films or debating the best clutch moments with anyone who will listen.
