Fantasy 2026 Rushing Quarterbacks: The Dual-Threat QBs Who Floor a Lineup

The most valuable trait a fantasy quarterback can have is a pair of legs. Passing production is noisy, matchup-dependent and shared across a whole position, but rushing production is a floor: a quarterback who runs for real yards and, more importantly, punches in short-yardage touchdowns adds points that do not depend on his receivers getting open. That is why the top of the quarterback position in fantasy has looked the same for years. It is not the best pure passers. It is the best runners. Here is the full 2025 board, every qualifying quarterback ranked by rushing yards, and the honest read on which of those yards actually floor a lineup.

Why rushing is the floor, not the ceiling

Think about what a rushing quarterback guarantees. On a bad passing day, when the offensive line breaks down and the receivers are covered, a runner still scrambles for 30 or 40 yards and maybe a short touchdown. That is four to ten points banked before a single completion. A pocket passer on the same bad day gives you almost nothing. Over a full season that difference compounds into a weekly floor that separates the elite fantasy quarterbacks from the streamers, and it is why draft boards keep paying up for legs even when the arm is ordinary. The board below sorts every 2025 quarterback who ran for real yards, from the 579-yard leader down, but yards are only half the story. The other half is what those yards turned into: a goal-line touchdown is worth six points on a play where every other passer hands the ball off, and a scramble for eight yards is worth a fraction of that. Sort by yards, then read the touchdowns.

The elite tier: volume, goal-line touchdowns, and availability

Josh Allen is the cleanest example of the whole thesis. He ran for 579 yards and 14 touchdowns across a full 17-game season in 2025, and those 14 rushing scores are the number that matters most. A quarterback who vultures his own goal line is scoring six points on plays where every other passer hands the ball off. The tier under him is defined by that same trait, goal-line scoring, not raw yardage. Jalen Hurts ran for 421 yards and eight rushing touchdowns over 16 games behind the most reliable short-yardage role in football. But he was not even the most prolific rushing-touchdown scorer in his own tier: Jaxson Dart ran for 487 yards and nine rushing touchdowns in just 14 games as a rookie, and Trevor Lawrence added 359 yards and nine rushing touchdowns over a full 17 games on a genuine goal-line role. Both of them out-scored Hurts on the ground. This is the tier that justifies a premium, because volume plus touchdown equity plus availability is what a fantasy floor actually is, and four quarterbacks cleared eight rushing scores to reach it.

Yards without the end zone: the scramblers

Not all rushing yards are created equal, and the board makes that obvious. Justin Herbert actually finished second in rushing yards with 498 on the ground, but he scored just two rushing touchdowns. Those are scramble yards, the product of a big-armed passer escaping pressure, not a designed short-yardage role. Caleb Williams is a similar story, 388 rushing yards but only three rushing scores across a full 17 games, and Baker Mayfield piled up 382 yards with a single rushing touchdown despite playing every game. Washington's other rushing quarterback, Marcus Mariota, belongs in the same bucket: pressed into a starting role, he ran for 297 yards but reached the end zone once in 11 games. The yards are useful, they add a few points a week and lift the floor a little, but they do not carry the touchdown equity that makes Allen, Hurts, Dart and Lawrence elite. When you are valuing a running quarterback, separate the rushing yards from the rushing touchdowns. The yards are a nice bonus. The goal-line touchdowns are the edge.

The full-season dual threats in the middle

Between the goal-line scorers and the pure scramblers sits a tier of quarterbacks who offer real rushing yards and a handful of scores without the elite touchdown volume. Drake Maye ran for 450 yards and four rushing touchdowns across a full 17-game season, a genuine dual-threat floor to go with a 4,394-yard passing year. Patrick Mahomes added 422 yards and five rushing touchdowns in 14 games, and Bo Nix posted 356 yards and five scores over a full season. None of these three floors a lineup on the ground the way Allen does, but each banks a steady four-to-five rushing touchdowns and a few hundred yards, which is a meaningful cushion under an already strong passing profile.

The high-rate names with a games-played asterisk

Three of the most explosive per-game runners on the board come with a caveat the raw yardage hides. Justin Fields ran for 383 yards in just nine games, and Jayden Daniels posted 278 yards in only seven, both on a per-game rushing pace that would climb this list if they had stayed healthy. Lamar Jackson ran for 349 yards in 13 games at his usual electric clip. That is the double edge of a rushing quarterback: the same running that raises the ceiling exposes him to contact and missed time, and a floor only helps you on the weeks he actually plays. Draft the injury-shortened rushers for the upside, but price the games-played risk honestly, because a dual-threat quarterback on the sideline is just an expensive backup.

The anti-example: the pocket passer

To see why the legs matter, look at what a lineup gets without them. Jared Goff is one of the most accurate high-volume passers in the league, and in 2025 he ran for 45 yards and zero rushing touchdowns. He is a fine fantasy quarterback when the passing volume is there, but he carries no rushing floor at all, so a quiet passing week is a quiet fantasy week with nothing underneath it. That is the trade a manager makes at the position: a pure passer needs everything to go right through the air, while a runner banks points on the ground no matter how the passing game looks. Neither is wrong to roster. But if you are choosing between two similar quarterbacks, the one with the rushing floor is the safer start almost every week.