CFB analyst heaps pressure on Oregon's Dante Moore to fill Bo Nix and Dillon Gabriel's shoes in 2025 

Dante Moore is about to become the third consecutive starting quarterback for the Oregon Ducks. However, preceding Bo Nix and Dillon Gabriel is not going to be an easy task.

The expectations are high, as Nix and Gabriel were one of the best quarterbacks in college football during their time with the Ducks.

These high expectations were echoed by college football analyst J.D. PicKell, who said this on Tuesday's edition of "The Hard Count":

"My expectation for him is the expectation that’s been set there from Bo Nix, Dillon Gabriel. I expect Dante Moore to be a Heisman finalist."

In the last few years, the Ducks under coach Dan Lanning have been a powerful team. Nix and Gabriel led their team from the front and both of them were shortlisted for the Heisman Trophy (the award given out to the "best" player in college football every season) in their respective seasons.

A team's new quarterback is always going to be compared to their previous one. For Moore, this may already be a losing battle. He is going to have to improve from a disappointing spell as starting quarterback for the UCLA Bruins (only throwing for around 1,600 yards) and become one of the best players in college football.

He'll have to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Arch Manning and Garrett Nussmeier. The silver lining for Moore is that he has already spent a year on the bench at Oregon, learning from what Gabriel did. He will have to put this into practice.

Dante Moore praises Oregon OC Will Stein

In an interview with the media, Dante Moore praised Ducks offensive coordinator Will Stein.

"One thing I will say about being here with Coach Stein, and I love him to death. He's played the quarterback position," Moore said. "He knows how it feels to be out there on the football field, how to be in the fire.

"So when it comes to him coaching us, he knows that covers them. So like, if we're off, you know, missing a couple of receivers at practice, he knows how to get us back in rhythm, a little quick, short throw, things of that nature. So just having him just to relate to us, and we all relate to him."

Will Stein has been with the Ducks since 2023. This is the same season when Bo Nix made the Heisman Trophy shortlist. Moore believes that his partnership with Stein will be able to give him the same level of success as his predecessors.