NEARLY TWO YEARS ago, on a Saturday night in Pasadena with little to play for between a 7-4 UCLA team and a 5-6 Cal team, Dante Moore and Fernando Mendoza faced off at the Rose Bowl in the last regular-season game of the year.
Moore was capping off a roller-coaster freshman season with the Bruins during which he went from having the starting job, to losing it and then having it again. It was his sixth start of the year. Mendoza, meanwhile, had started his own freshman campaign as the third-string quarterback before taking hold of the gig for the Golden Bears over the last seven games of the season.
Though their journeys to that point had been far from similar, both quarterbacks had been thrown right into the cauldron as freshmen and asked to build experience on the fly while helping their teams win games. This game, which Cal won 33-7 and saw both Mendoza and Moore throw two interceptions each, was a reminder that they were far from finished products.
Two seasons later, they are set to face off again — this time with Mendoza leading Indiana and Moore leading Oregon to undefeated records, top-10 rankings and a clear path toward the College Football Playoff. In the process, both have also become NFL draft darlings, unexpected risers inside a quarterback draft class that has so far looked disjointed at best.
“That’s why Mendoza, to me, has gained the most steam,” one NFL personnel executive said.
Meanwhile another NFL executive said he has Moore, not Mendoza, ranked inside the top three of his quarterback rankings.
An under-the-radar three-star and a seemingly forgotten five-star, Mendoza and Moore have both shown flashes of high-level traits that could make them not just tantalizing NFL prospects in the future, but also the perfect players to lead their teams in this very moment.
“I think we got the best quarterback in college football,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning declared after the Ducks’ win at Penn State.
“Mendoza is another one of those guys who I believe is going to play on Sunday,” Indiana defensive coordinator Aaron Henry said earlier this year. “He makes some throws, you’re like, ‘My goodness.’ … I think his downfield vision, his progressions that he makes when he’s in a pocket is absolutely incredible.”
THERE WERE TOO many signs pointing in one direction for Mendoza. He had already graduated at Cal and was set to enter his third season under a fourth different offensive coordinator, one who he said he didn’t feel like quite aligned with his priorities.
“I wanted to be in a system that I think would translate really well to the next level,” Mendoza told ESPN in an interview before the season.
The NFL had been a childhood dream, of course, but not one he ever thought was real until the chatter began this past offseason. During his high school recruiting process, Mendoza, who’s from Miami, received offers from only Cal, FIU, Yale and Penn.
“It all kind of just went from, ‘Hey I want to go DI’ to ‘I want to start a game.’ ‘I want to win a game’ to ‘I want to become a full-time starter,'” Mendoza said. “It kind of just snowballed and then earlier this year, talking to some people, reading some things like, ‘Wow is this actually true? Can this be possible?'”
Mendoza’s improvement has been mostly linear, but the breakout happened last season when he threw for 3,004 yards on a 68.7% completion rate to go along with 16 touchdowns and six interceptions. Through five games this year, Mendoza has thrown for 1,208 yards on a 73% competition rate (top 10 in the country) while already matching his 16 touchdowns from last season with only one interception.
“I just look back at some of my clips from even fall camp last year at Cal to this year and I’m just a completely different quarterback,” Mendoza said.
The same could be said for Moore. His gap year, when he watched Dillon Gabriel excel in offensive coordinator Will Stein’s system, didn’t provide too many clues as to how he would fare, but the early returns have been stellar: 1,210 yards, 14 touchdowns and 1 interception. Like Mendoza, Moore’s completion rate (74.6%) is one of the 10 best in the country, too.
Nationally, Mendoza (0.55) and Moore (0.50) are No. 3 and 4 in EPA per dropback, trailing only USC’s Jayden Maiava (0.63) and Marshall’s Carlos Del Rio-Wilson (0.56). Both have two of the best touchdown passes per attempt rates in the nation — Mendoza is first with 13.1% while Moore is third with 10.4% — and no other quarterback has better touchdown-to-interception ratios than them. And the respective offenses they lead? Both are ranked inside the top 10 in SP+.
Mendoza attributes the smooth transition to coming into an established system as opposed to having to build it from the ground up himself. Through flashcard quizzes with his teammates and a copious amount of studying the playbook, Mendoza has tried to erase any learning curve, and the fact that several of those teammates have been with the program for two, three, even four years, Mendoza said, has helped elevate his own play. In other words, it’s exactly what he envisioned when he made the call to head to Bloomington.
“Everyone thinks he’s super talented,” one NFL personnel executive said of Mendoza. “He’s a big kid, he throws the ball really well. The ball comes off his hand like a legit NFL QB.”
“When his first read is not there, he kind of panics, and his mechanics go away,” the executive said. “But that’s the only negative about him as a player. Iowa gave him trouble, taking away some of the underneath stuff.”
The executive added that the possibility of Mendoza being the No. 1 pick is “not off the table.”
The elephant in the room is that this particular quarterback class doesn’t quite have the top-heavy potential that others have had in the past. It’s why, as one NFL executive put it, Mendoza and Moore (alongside Oklahoma’s John Mateer) have been the biggest risers this season.
MOORE’S PATH TO Oregon was not so much unexpected as much as it was delayed. He had committed to the Ducks at one point during his recruitment before changing course and heading to UCLA instead. After a season of both freshman flashes and mistakes, the departure of Chip Kelly to Ohio State made Moore’s decision easy.
“I knew I was coming to Oregon. Me and Coach Lanning had that connection, of course,” Moore told ESPN in an interview last offseason. “Everybody’s like, ‘Bro, you supposed to have been here, whatever.’ I’m like, ‘Hey man, everything happens for a reason.’ So I’m here now.”
The unconventional move to Eugene ended up being the best thing for Moore. As he sat back and watched the success Gabriel had, it was further proof that he had made the right call.
“It takes a special person, a guy that can process like Bo [Nix], like Dillon [Gabriel] and like Dante Moore to keep this thing rolling at the rate we want to keep it rolling,” Stein said.
The year on the bench and offseason workouts in Dallas alongside NFL stars like Dak Prescott and Patrick Mahomes set Moore up to be that guy. Through five games he has looked comfortable and in rhythm as part of an offense that is full of playmakers but still needs a guiding hand. For Stein, the challenge of getting the most out of any quarterback is part of the fun. Unlike Nix or Gabriel, who transferred in and were under Stein’s direction for only one season, with Moore, there has been some longer term development that has been mutually beneficial.
“To me development for a quarterback is to go to an offense that has proven to be successful and is able to set you up to play at the next level,” Stein said. “Can you go and run an NFL-style offense? Can you handle a little bit lengthier play call? Can you change the protection? Can you change the run? And then can you go out and function in a hostile environment and do that?”
Though he entered the year as quietly as a former five-star can, the even-keeled Moore has quickly amped up the volume with his play. The challenge of handling a Penn State crowd of 111,015 and leading Oregon to an overtime win in that environment felt like it was him passing his first big exam. Suddenly, he’s one of the favorites for the Heisman Trophy.
“As he’s played more, you can see he’s building on his success, confidence, belief, and he’s one of the great quarterbacks in the country,” Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti said of Moore. “There’s no doubt about it.”
While Cignetti was quick to heap praise on Moore, he has been more reserved with his own quarterback, expressing confidence in Mendoza, but always pointing out that there’s more to improve upon even as Indiana continues to win.
Yet Mendoza has a claim to being one of the “great quarterbacks in the country,” too. So far this season is going exactly as he imagined, after all. Going to Indiana wasn’t just about a change of scenery, an NIL boost or even fully about a chance at getting ready for the NFL.
“I want to win as many games as possible. At Cal, I had six wins both years. I really wanted at least one double-digit-win season,” Mendoza said. “I don’t play football because of external factors. I truly do love football. I would play football if I was a walk-on with no scholarship.”
Saturday’s game in Eugene will be far from the final referendum on Mendoza and Moore as prospective NFL quarterbacks. But with 16 NFL scouts scheduled to be in attendance at Autzen Stadium, all eyes will be on more than just the result this time around.
Jake Trotter contributed to this story.
