Which member of the 2025 QB class is most likely to take a second-year leap?

Drake Maye is the new standard when it comes to the second-year leap for NFL quarterbacks. He went from being ‘just fine’ as a rookie to being a game-wrecking gunslinger and a somewhat dual-threat quarterback in his second season as a pro.

There were 15 rookie quarterbacks in 2025, but only nine of them actually threw at least one pass this season. Those guys were Cam Ward, Jaxson Dart, Tyler Shough, Dillon Gabriel, Shedeur Sanders, Riley Leonard, Quinn Ewers, Max Brosmer, and Brady Cook. 

There’s a difference between a quarterback bump and a quarterback leap. If we take out the bump candidates, we’re looking at Ward, Dart, Shough, and Sanders, who can make a leap.

Now, there’s a glaring similarity between three of those guys: they all have new head coaches and new offensive coordinators. A lot of these guys’ ability to make the leap is going to stem from the people who are in charge of helping them grow. 

4. Shedeur Sanders, Cleveland Browns

No one really knows if the Browns are going to run it back with Shedeur Sanders next year. Any and every option is on the table with that franchise, especially at quarterback. But let’s pretend that he’s going to be their guy in 2026… He’s a Pro-Bowler after all. 

His new head coach is Todd Monken, and he’s got a decent history of building quarterbacks going into their second year. In 2016, he had Jameis Winston in Tampa Bay, and in 2019, he had Baker Mayfield in Cleveland. The problem is that both of those guys are particularly weird cases. 

Winston kind of got better in his second year, but it wasn’t a jump by any means. He went from a completion rate of 58.3 percent to 60.8 percent. He went from throwing for 4,042 yards and 22 touchdowns to 4,090 yards and 28 touchdowns… but he also went from throwing 15 interceptions to throwing 18 interceptions. 

A lot of his passing success that season was because of Mike Evans getting the most work that he’s ever had. That season, he was targeted a career-high 173 times. It’s hard to give Winston complete credit when he spammed the ‘future first-ballot Hall-of-Fame wide receiver’ button.

In 2019, Baker Mayfield had a significantly worse season than he did in his 13 starts as a rookie. His completion percentage dropped, his yards per game dropped, his total touchdowns went from 27 to 22, and his interceptions went up. Pretty much all bad stuff. 

The point is that Monken has had experience with these young quarterbacks, but it hasn’t been great.

3. Jaxson Dart, New York Giants

John Harbaugh is a floor-raising head coach, so when the Giants hired him, they were pretty much making sure they weren’t going to bottom out as they have for most of the last decade. 

If they were going to get to the peak, they were going to have to nail their offensive and defensive coordinator hirings. They did a good job with Dennard Wilson as their DC… But for their OC, they went with Matt Nagy. Yuck. 

In his 13 seasons as an NFL quarterback coach/offensive coordinator/head coach, Nagy has been in charge of developing just two young starting quarterbacks: Patrick Mahomes in 2017 and Mitchell Trubisky with the Bears.

It’s probably fair not to give him the credit for Mahomes since that was his rookie season, and he sat behind Alex Smith all season. So you have to look at the 2018 through 2021 seasons with Trubisky and the Bears. 

They were a good football team in 2018, but by no means was that because Trubisky was making a monumental leap forward in his ability to play quarterback. 

Jaxson Dart is probably a better and more talented quarterback than Trubisky is or ever will be, but he’s not exactly being set up for success by his coaching staff or the players around him. 

So you expect Dart to grow in his second season? Yeah, sure. Do you think he’s going to carry the team the way Drake Maye carried the 2025 Patriots? No.

2. Cam Ward, Tennessee Titans

Cam Ward was the first overall pick in the 2025 draft, so it’s boring to say that he’s got a good opportunity to make a leap in year two… but it's also correct.

The Titans just hired Brian Daboll to be their offensive coordinator next season, and it was a really, really good decision. If you’re looking for an OC that has the best and most recent track record of developing young QBs, you’re not going to do much better than him. 

He was famously the OC in Buffalo when Josh Allen turned into a demi-god, but it’s not quite that simple. 

Allen made a big jump from year one to year two, but his massive leap was from year two to year three (when they finally got him a bona fide WR1 in Stefon Diggs).

But focusing on that first to second year growth: Allen threw the ball 140 more times, had 100 more completions, 1000 more passing yards, 10 more touchdowns (double from his rookie season), and threw three fewer interceptions. That’s a massive jump.

Now, some of that has to do with him being incredibly raw as a rookie, but it’s still very impressive. If the Titans can get 50 percent of that with their Daboll/Ward mind-meld, they’re going to be in a really good spot moving forward. 

1. Tyler Shough, New Orleans Saints

Tyler Shough is the only one of these guys who is not getting a new offensive head coach, or offensive coordinator, or quarterbacks coach; he’s still going to be with Kellen Moore, Doug Nussmeier, and Scott Tolzien. That kind of continuity is going to be really good for him, especially since it was already working really well for him last season. 

None of those guys have had experience working with second-year quarterbacks in the NFL, but they turned Shough into a solid quarterback as a rookie. With Moore’s history of running incredibly high-caliber offenses, there’s no other option but to be excited to see what happens with Shough in year two.

Is this a boring conclusion to all of this? Yes, but it’s right. 

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