In a highly anticipated rematch of last season’s Big Ten championship game, No. 6 Oregon invaded Happy Valley on Saturday to take on No. 3 Penn State, with the Ducks putting their 22 game regular season winning streak on the line. But for at least a few NFL teams â including the Cleveland Browns â their attention will be focused on their possible next quarterback, Oregon’s 20-year-old Dante Moore.
According to a new mock draft projection by USA Today Browns Wire, the Browns will target Moore if they land the No. 1 pick in 2026.
“The strong quarterback class has evaporated over the past month. The top quarterbacks have been incredibly inconsistent, and in a few cases, theyâve regressed. However, one quarterback is quickly positioning himself as the top pick,” the Browns Wire anonymous prognosticator wrote on Saturday. “Dante Moore has taken college football by storm.”
Moore Waited Turn Behind Browns’ Dillon Gabriel
After a rocky first year at UCLA where he was that school’s top recruit in 2023 out of Martin Luther King High School in Detroit, the 6-foot-3, 206-pound Moore entered the transfer portal and moved about 850 miles up the west coast to Eugene, Oregon, where he redshirted for a year behind Dillon Gabriel.
Desperate for a reliable starting quarterback, the Browns selected Gabriel in the 2025 third round, with the 94th pick overall.
With the Browns, Gabriel finds himself wedged between 40-year-old, 17-year veteran Joe Flacco on one side, and heavily hyped former Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders â who the Browns took with pick No. 144, in the fifth round â on the other.
But according to the Browns Wire projection, Gabriel next year could find himself displaced by his own former teammate.
Moore Gets First Real Test Against Penn State
“Moore has all the tools to be a top quarterback. He has a big arm that can access every portion of the field. He can alter his arm angles to slip throws by defenders,” the site wrote. “So far, heâs been very accurate. Moore is a running threat, and heâs a polished passer on the run. Moore forces defenses to account for everything when game planning against him.”
But Moore had one strike against him, according to Browns Wire. He had yet to play against top-ranked opposition. But that would change on Saturday when he faced another top NFL quarterback prospect in Penn State’s Drew Allar.
In fact, another quarterback-starved NFL team, the New York Jets, reportedly had scouts watching Allar closely in the Oregon matchup.
Dolphins Also Possible Destination For Moore
But the Browns may not have been the only NFL organization watching Moore on Saturday. Ian Cummings of Pro Football Network posted his latest mock draft on Sunday, and in his version, the Browns get the No. 2 pick and use it on a quarterback â but not Moore.
Instead, according to Cummings, Cleveland takes South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers, while with the very next pick, Moore goes to the Miami Dolphins.
“The Penn State game is a proving ground for Moore. If he holds this trajectory, he can be an early first-round talent in the mold of C.J. Stroud â with easy mobility, arm talent, accuracy, and anticipation,” Cummings wrote. “With the Dolphins on track for a reset, Moore could be a target for them.”
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