Oregon quarterback Dante Moore is not expected to return this season, coach Dan Lanning announced Monday. ESPN reported that Moore has missed the past three games with a concussion. CBS Sports' Austin Nivison wrote that Moore has not played since he suffered the head injury against USC on Sept. 26. Yahoo Sports, citing a ClutchPoints report, said the Ducks announced on Monday that Moore is not expected to make another appearance in 2026 as he continues to deal with the concussion.
The date of the injury differs between outlets. One Yahoo piece puts the USC game on Sept. 29, but CBS says Sept. 26, and our game log has Oregon at USC on Sept. 26. Another Yahoo item says Moore is ending his college career before the NFL draft. Nothing else we have says that, and no outlet reports a decision from Moore on his future. CBS notes only that he turned down the 2026 NFL Draft to come back to Oregon.
Moore's season was short, and his line was clean. He played four games and threw for 926 yards and nine touchdowns with no interceptions. He had 378 yards and three touchdowns against Boise State in the opener, 191 yards and two touchdowns at Oklahoma State, and 280 yards and four touchdowns against Portland State. At USC he was 8-of-10 for 77 yards before the injury, with no touchdowns.
The Ducks have struggled without him. They are 4-3 overall and 2-2 in the Big Ten, which puts them 11th in the conference, and they have lost their last game. They lost 17-15 to UCLA on Oct. 10. They beat Nebraska 17-14 on Oct. 17, then lost 21-10 at Illinois on Saturday. That means Oregon has scored 10, 17 and 15 points in the three games Moore has missed. Yahoo described the campaign as continuing to "spiral downward."
| YDS | TD | INT |
|---|---|---|
| 926 | 9 | 0 |
Next up for Oregon is Northwestern on Saturday, Oct. 31. None of the reporting names who will start in Moore's absence, or says how the team will handle the position for the rest of the year.
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