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Jayden Daniels posted five boom-eligible games of 17 or more fantasy points last season at a 64.5% consistency rate, and that single line in the overlay is why our 2026 fantasy QB rankings have him at QB2 while the consensus parks him at QB5.
That gap is the story of the 2026 fantasy QB board. Rushing floor moves the ceiling, and the ceiling moves the rank.
Best-ball score is our composite output: ceiling, average, boom rate, and consistency rolled into one number. Higher is better. Tiers are engine-derived from score clusters.
| Rank | Player | Tier | Best-Ball Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Josh Allen | T1 | 992 |
| 2 | Jayden Daniels | T2 | 979 |
| 3 | Lamar Jackson | T3 | 970 |
| 4 | Jalen Hurts | T3 | 969 |
| 5 | Jaxson Dart | T4 | 959 |
| 6 | Drake Maye | T4 | 953 |
| 7 | Patrick Mahomes | T5 | 945 |
| 8 | Brock Purdy | T5 | 944 |
| 9 | Dak Prescott | T6 | 936 |
| 10 | Joe Burrow | T6 | 935 |
| 11 | Bo Nix | T6 | 932 |
| 12 | Cam Mendoza | T8 | 911 |
Source: FantasyPros ECR via DynastyProcess, refreshed 2026-05-06.
Three names sit ahead of consensus inside the QB1-QB7 window.
| Player | Our Rank | Consensus Rank | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jayden Daniels | QB2 | QB5 | +3 |
| Jalen Hurts | QB4 | QB6 | +2 |
| Jaxson Dart | QB5 | QB7 | +2 |
Daniels is the headline. The market is still pricing him as a year-two breakout candidate. Our engine is pricing the work he already did. Five 17-plus games on a 64.5% consistency rate is not a projection. It is a ledger entry, and the overlay reads it as a ceiling of 30.18 with a 23.12 average. Rank follows.
Hurts moves up two slots on the same logic. The tush-push touchdown floor and the rushing volume push his ceiling above arms-only QBs sitting at similar weekly averages. Consensus penalizes the Eagles passing-volume cap. The engine reads the rushing line first.
Dart is the rookie exception. He has no 2025 NFL weekly history to feed the overlay, so his 959 is built from projection inputs alone. Consensus has him a slot lower at QB7. We have him at QB5 because the projected rushing share for his role lifts the ceiling band even before a single regular-season snap. Treat the Dart number as the highest-variance entry on the board.
| Player | Our Rank | Consensus Rank | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drake Maye | QB6 | QB3 | -3 |
Maye is the cleanest illustration of how the ceiling overlay actually works. He has no qualifying 2025 weekly overlay attached to his profile, which means the ceiling-promotion step that lifts Daniels and Hurts cannot fire on his card. His 953 is built on projection alone, with no weekly boom evidence to bend the rank upward. Consensus is pricing the New England offensive ascent. The engine is waiting on weekly proof.
This is not a fade. It is a cohort sort. Until weekly 2026 data lands, Maye sits in the same tier as Dart, not the same tier as Jackson and Hurts.
Three cliffs on the QB board, and they are the only three that change roster construction.
After QB4. The elite cliff. Allen, Daniels, Jackson, Hurts. Score gap from Hurts (969) to Dart (959) is 10 points. That is the difference between weekly league-winner upside and weekly league-stable upside. If you take a QB inside the first four, you are paying for ceiling. Outside the four, you are paying for stability.
After QB6. The young-gun cliff. Dart and Maye round out a tier built on projection rather than on overlay-confirmed weekly data. Score drop from Maye (953) to Mahomes (945) is only eight points, but the underlying confidence interval widens. You are betting on rookie role and on a sophomore overlay that does not exist yet.
After QB11. The locked-starter cliff. Nix at 932 closes the band of QBs the engine treats as stable weekly starters. Mendoza at 911 is a 21-point drop and the start of a different conversation: rookies, backups with paths, and bye-week pivots. If your draft hits pick 11 without a QB and Nix is gone, you are now in streamer territory. Plan accordingly.
Daniels is the reference case. The engine sees:
A pocket QB with the same 23.12 average will not have the same 30.18 ceiling, because rushing yardage and rushing scores compress the gap between a typical week and a peak week. The overlay reads that compression and pushes the rank up. It is the same math that lifts Hurts and Jackson into the elite tier and the same math that holds Mahomes at QB7 despite a similar weekly average. Without a rushing floor, the ceiling band stays narrow. Without a wide ceiling band, the engine does not promote the rank. That is the entire mechanism in one paragraph.
It is also why Dart and Maye are stranded at the same tier despite very different draft narratives. Until weekly 2026 data fills in their overlay, neither one has a ceiling line the engine can trust.
The full top-24, tier shading, and live ADP deltas live on the QB best-ball board. For the position-only view, see our live QB rankings. Sort by ceiling, sort by consistency, sort by score. Then draft.