Dan Lanning flipped the page quickly. Two days after Oregon's drubbing at the hands of Indiana Friday night he took recruiting visits from top portal prospects like Minnesota safety Koi Perich, Utah cornerback Smith Snowden and former five-star quarterback Dylan Raiola, the starter at Nebraska for the last two seasons.
The Raiola situation is moving with Dakorien Moore speed. Already Max Torres and Justin Hopkins have entered predictions that the 6-3, 230 rifle-armed former five star will commit to the Ducks.
More importantly, Chris Hummer and Matt Zenitz of CBS report that Raiola may choose Oregon even if Dante Moore returns for his junior year, setting up a situation where Moore starts while Raiola rehabs and refines his game, much like Moore did in taking an apprentice season under Dillon Gabriel.
In another development yesterday, 6-3, 245 linebacker Kamar Mothudi has entered the transfer portal, a redshirt freshman who appeared in one game this season. This increases urgency that the Ducks pick up a pair of linebackers in the portal, ideally including a green dot impact player in the middle to replace Bryce Boettcher, who became the first Duck since 1979 to reach 136 tackles, tops in the Big Ten.
Lanning and his staff again show the ability to think two steps ahead
If Raiola sits a year and works on his game, it could set the Ducks up again with the most stable backup situation in college football. We'll have a longer profile on him later, but he was a five-star prospect out of high school after completing 64 percent of his passes for 2,819 yards and 34 touchdowns with just one interception as a senior at Buford, Georgia.
He started as a true freshman at Nebraska in 2024. In two seasons with the Huskers he went 13-9, including a 5-1 start this season before breaking the leg injury against USC.
He's strictly a pocket passer with -152 yards rushing in his career. But in Year Two he improved to 18 touchdowns with six interceptions, increasing his completion percentage from 67.1 to 72.4, his yards per attempt from 6.9 to 8.0.
The move to Oregon certainly worked for Bo Nix and Dante Moore, and there are a few parallels. Raiola's dad Dominic was an All-American center at NU, the first Rimington Award winner and a 14-year veteran in the NFL.
Though he's drawn a lot of derision for his Pat Mahomes mannerisms and haircut, Raiola is by all accounts a hard worker and a good leader. A year ago in October Matt Rhule told Mitch Sherman of The Athletic, “He’s so self-aware and he’s not afraid,” Rhule said. “A lot of guys don’t see corrections. He wants to get corrected and he wants to be better. It’s a lot of fun coaching guys like that.”
He's a big-armed thrower but like Moore he has to improve his pocket presence. In each of the last two seasons he took 27 sacks.
With a year to reset and develop, he could be another winning QB at Oregon, motivated to change the narrative and become an NFL prospect. The thought of getting both of them for next season is particularly intriguing.
But it doubles down on the urgency to add a quarterback whisperer and offensive guru to the staff, someone who can groom these two the way Chip Kelly transformed Dennis Dixon or Kenny Dillingham refined Nix.