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Oregon’s high-profile backup QB has a story to tell.
EUGENE — Dante Moore was already comfortable in Eugene before last Thursday morning.
The former five-star quarterback moved to Oregon in January. He’s met some friends, enjoys the competition amongst his teammates in the quarterback room and his brother has since moved out to the city from Michigan. He already likes Dan Lanning — remember, he had previously committed to the Oregon coach before that one-year detour through Westwood — and says that he’s already learning by the handfuls from Oregon No. 1 Dillon Gabriel.
Yes, life is good — far more stable than it felt a year ago, when Moore was a 17-year-old freshman in Los Angeles drinking from a fire hose with sky-high expectations.
And again, that was all before last week.
Then, just before sitting down with The I-5 Corridor, Moore got news that he said changed everything:
His mom, Jera Moore, had just texted him that she was breast cancer-free.
“She’s a survivor,” Moore said, emotion cracking in his voice. “This made my summer. This made everything. Today, I feel amazing.”
I sat down with Moore inside the Marcus Mariota Sports Performance Center last week, not to talk specifically about football, but more about his journey.
Ducks fans likely know the on-field bullet points:
Moore, the top-rated quarterback in the 2023 class, committed to Oregon in the summer of 2022 as UO’s highest-rated quarterback commit of all time.
Later that year he decommitted, instead signing with UCLA, dropping into a quarterback room where his inexperience and talent were pinned against the veteran savvy of Ethan Garbers.
Moore started six games as a true freshman. He threw a lot of interceptions. This offseason, he hit the portal solely intending to end up back in Eugene.
This, Moore said, is where he was supposed to be the whole time — even if he took an unconventional route to get here.
Then again, Moore’s route has been anything but conventional.
We are here to talk about his children’s book, after all.
If Dante Moore could watch the highlights of any athlete in history, Moore wastes no time saying whose name he’d write down in the YouTube search bar.
It would be his mom.
Jera Moore — formerly Jera Bohlen — was a tenacious all-state guard in the 90s in Ohio who would go on to attend Ohio University. Moore said he used to sift through the box of offers his mom kept, imagining that someday the same would happen in his own athletic career.
“I used to count how many she had,” Moore said. “It motivated me. It made me want to make sure I got to where my mom was at. Having her to make sure that I’m competing every day — you know, when I was younger, I used to tell her that I’d have more offers than her. She really just pushed me and lit that fuse.”
It didn’t take Moore long to start making up ground.
Born in East Cleveland, Moore quickly became one of the most sought-after young quarterbacks in the country. As a seventh-grader, Moore remembers Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh pulling him aside after a camp and offering him a full-ride scholarship to quarterback the Wolverines. Moore was 12 and had no idea what a scholarship actually meant. He said his dad explained it to him during the car ride back home.
“I’m not coming from a wealthy family,” Moore said. “Hearing that, in the backseat I just started crying.”
And that was only the start of it. After a stellar high school career at MLK in Detroit, Moore sky-rocketed to the top of his class, with schools like Oregon, UCLA, Michigan, LSU, Miami and just about everyone else vying for the services of the 6-foot-3, 200-plus pound prodigy with the golden arm. He threw for 32 touchdowns against three interceptions his senior year, leading MLK to a second consecutive Michigan high school state championship.
He first committed to Oregon. When it became apparent Bo Nix would return for a super senior year in 2023, he flipped to UCLA — sending Moore across the country as a 17-year-old freshman with a starting Division I job on the line. Moore said he remembers looking around the quarterback room early in his time in Westwood and having reality hit him all at once.
“Holy shit,” Moore said he thought. “I’m really going to play in a college football game.”
It was far from an easy year.
Despite Moore earning playing time as a true freshman, he’ll be the first to admit that he was far from his best. He made too many bad throws, he said. There were a lot of decisions he’d like to have back — likening the experience to his freshman year starting in high school.
“I went from 14, 15 picks my freshman year to throwing just a couple as a senior,” he said. “I feel like in college football last year, I made a lot of mistakes — threw too many pick-sixes and things like that. Of course, it’s different from high school to college. There’s more fans. Many more things are on the line in college. But at the end of the day, I know I need to get back to the mindset that it’s just football.”
The last seven months have gone a long way in helping that.
Moore first heard about his mom’s cancer diagnosis just after spring ball in 2023. He was in UCLA’s academic building, got a text, dropped his phone and burst into tears.
It wasn’t the easiest backdrop for his first year away from home. But Moore said things started to improve as soon as the season came to an end.
“I really respect [then-UCLA coach Chip Kelly] pulling me aside and saying they were going to give me a medical flight back home to make sure I’d get to see my mom,” he said. “She didn’t know I was coming. So to surprise her, getting a big hug and having her cry on my shoulder, I’m getting a little emotional now just thinking of it.”
When he came to Eugene, things were immediately different.
A week before Moore transferred to Oregon, Heisman favorite Dillon Gabriel did the same. The former Oklahoma star is the most experienced quarterback in college football, one of the few players who have a pedigree deep enough for an unassailable spot atop the depth chart.
The pressure was off of Moore, who has learned from Gabriel and also figured out how to push his new teammate. Moore said Gabriel is one of the most competitive people he’s ever met and they’ll often spiral into competitions of who can throw the ball the farthest or move the most iron in the weight room.
“Dillon needs to be around competitors,” Moore said, “and my mindset is not going to change. I’m not going to want to sit. I’m going to come in with the mindset that if I win the job I win the job. I’m going to compete my ass off and let the chips fall where they fall.
“But at the end of the day, I’m going to be a great teammate.”
Added Oregon coach Dan Lanning: “He’s matured. He’s a guy who has seen how college football has changed. You come in with a mindset as a freshman, and then you go into your sophomore year and your mindset is completely different. You’ve seen that change.”
So, about the book.
When Moore was young, he said he devoured sports stories. He’d read sports books and hang on the words of pro athletes from the area when they came back to share stories of their travels. Those were especially inspiring, Moore said, allowing him to craft big dreams — such as playing football in college in front of 60,000 people, then later making it to the NFL.
In this new NIL world, Moore isn’t unique in that he’s selling merchandise. DanteMooreShop.com is filled with t-shirts and hoodies and long sleeves with Moore’s likeness plastered all over them.
But no other Division I quarterback is currently selling a book. And when Moore finally got a hard copy of “From Journey to Dream: Mr. 4000 takes the City of Dreams,” in his hands earlier this summer, well, that was something.
“I’m really an old-head in spirit. I just wanted to be the type of person who can give back and make sure it can be understandable for kids,” Moore said. “Being able to have the book and seeing the colors and the pictures and the wording and understanding, like, this is crazy. I really wrote a book.”
He also knows his life story still has chapters to fill. On the field, Moore said he’s more than ready to help the Ducks — whether that’s this season, or next year as the starter. He’s already better than he was, he said. More mature. More ready.
And again, that was before he got that news from his mom, who will be in the stands on Aug. 31 for Oregon’s season opener against Idaho.
“Today made my year, man. That’s the biggest thing,” he said. “I needed that.”
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
