Oregon’s Dante Moore right where he belongs in new Big Ten QB rankings

Josh Pate ranks Dante Moore third among Big Ten quarterbacks, ahead of Demond Williams Jr., Luke Altmyer, Fernando Mendoza and new UCLA signal caller Nico Iamaleava, who made the playoffs last year at Tennessee.

Quarterback power rankings and preseason ratings necessarily reflect the supporting cast. They don't make proper sense without context.

Host of the eponymous "Josh Pate's College Football Show" on CBS/247 Sports, Pate released his 2025 QB ratings, sure to induce howls of indignation from Indiana, Illiinois and UCLA fans, quibbles everywhere else.

That's the fun of preseason position rankings. They keep the fires burning 78 days before college football kickoff.

Outrage ensued. Epithets were hurled. Oregon fan Jrule responded, "Why is that bum at number two? Just Sayin."

Turtle Time wrote, "Allar No. 1 for what?" A USC honk said, "Dante is gonna flop. Dude is unproven, is working with unproven receivers, has a rebuilt line, in a position of pressure and expectations…"

Badger fan Josh Knegendorf said, "Way too low on Mendoza. He did a lot with a little at Cal. He’s going to be awesome at Indiana."

Knegendorf gets extra credit for touting a QB from another school, and the stats support him: Mendoza threw for 3,004 yards and 16 touchdowns on a 6-7 Cal Bears squad last year.

Regarding Moore, three is optimistic but a solid choice by Pate, who is painstaking and decisive with his takes and evaluations on his show, passionate about college football. He hardly ever takes a day off.

Moore's great advantage is climbing up the ladder of expectations is that he won't have to do much to look great, playing behind a solid offense line with a roster full of dynamic targets.

The 6-3, 210 five-star from Detroit has arm talent and 221 career passing attempts over 13 games, far more than Sayin or Underwood, far less than Allar, Mendoza or Altmyer. He's had a full year of Will Stein's Celebrity Quarterback Rehab, designed to give him a new decision-making toolkit.

It's the supporting cast that puts him over the top, in an offense built to be explosive and generate easy completions and explosive plays. Moore's going to look better than most of the conference because he has better weapons, in addition to the talent to become very good over time.

Chances are Pate applied the same reasoning to Sayin and Underwood, two talented prospects with exceptional supporting casts. Throwing hitches, outs and slants to Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate is great foundation for a quarterback's success.

All of them will be tested, however. Sooner or later they'll face situations that demand clutch throws, big plays and critical decisions, sometime in the fourth quarter at Penn State, Iowa or Washington.

Having a respected analyst like Pate rate Moore so highly should be encouraging for Duck fans. It reinforces the confidence Stein and Dan Lanning expressed in him by passing up the 2025 portal crop at QB.

Moore is their guy, unless Austin Novosad outplays him by a lot in August.

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