‘It’ll absolutely be a competition’: Oregon football coaches talk quarterback battle

• Oregon Ducks football coach Dan Lanning confirms that the starting quarterback position for the 2025 season is a wide-open competition.
• Offensive coordinator Will Stein is pleased with the quarterbacks’ progress and believes they have the potential to succeed.

Though spring football practice has just begun, and the Oregon football team will head to spring break before returning full time to practice in April, the starting quarterback competition for 2025 is well underway.

At his first press conference following the Ducks‘ first spring practice Thursday, coach Dan Lanning confirmed that a starter was far from decided heading into the fall.

“It’ll absolutely be a competition,” Lanning said. “It’s a competition at every single position on the field for us. Competition is what makes us better. I’m excited to see those guys grow and they’ve done a good job. We’ve added some wrinkles this offseason that are a little bit different and they’ve done a good job absorbing that and executing it.”

Over the first three seasons of Lanning’s tenure in Eugene the Ducks have been fortunate to feature two of the most experienced quarterbacks in college football history in Bo Nix and Dillon Gabriel.

A year after Nix broke the record for most starts made by a college football quarterback in 2023, Gabriel broke that record in 2024 for the Ducks. Both were Heisman Trophy finalists.

Now Oregon is turning the page on a much younger, but equally talented group of gunslingers, featuring sophomore Dante Moore, redshirt freshman Luke Moga, sophomore Brock Thomas, true freshman Akili Smith Jr. and sophomore Austin Novosad.

Moore, who transferred from UCLA after a bumpy freshman season in 2023 as a consensus top QB recruit, and Novosad, a former blue-chip recruit himself, are the only quarterbacks with any sort of playing time over the last several seasons.

“It’s been really fun so far,” offensive coordinator Will Stein said. “It’s been fresh, it’s been challenging at times in a good way … They attacked this offseason like champs. Through the first two days they’ve shown a good understanding of our offense. I think the sky is the limit for that group. I do feel like we have guys that are in there that can win games for us and we’ll figure out over the next five to six months who is going to be running out against Montana State (in the Aug. 30 season-opener at Autzen Stadium). For now, they’re working their tails off and doing a nice job.”

Moore has the most experience, and arguably the most upside as a former top-five recruit in the country in 2023. The sophomore redshirted last season after playing in nine games for UCLA in 2023, completing 53.5% of his passes for 11 touchdowns and nine interceptions. In spot appearances with the Ducks last year Moore completed 7 of 8 pass attempts for 49 yards.

Novosad has appeared in six games over his first two seasons in Eugene, completing 11 of 13 pass attempts for 59 total yards in mop-up duty. The 6-foot-3 Texas native was a four-star recruit and top-10 quarterback in the 2023 class, and Stein praised Novosad Saturday for his knowledge of the system entering Year 3.

Novosad is also still close with Nix, now with the Denver Broncos, and the two will spend time with each other over the upcoming spring break, per Stein.

The rest have little experience, but are undeniably talented. Moga was a three-star recruit from Arizona in 2024, Thomas starred at Sheldon High in Eugene before walking on at Oregon and Smith — the son of former Duck great Akili Smith — joined his father’s alma mater as a four-star recruit and the 16th-ranked quarterback in the 2025 class late last fall.

“They’ve all done a really good job so far of keeping the main thing the main thing,” Stein said. “Just trying to grow each and every day and not trying to press. Any time there is this type of hyper quarterback competition, guys try to press … I’ve just challenged them to run the offense. Take each play as its own and do a good job with that. They’ve done a really solid job so far.”

One quarterback will trot out as the opening-day starter against Montana State. Each candidate will get a look during Oregon’s spring game April 26, and have all spring, summer and fall to prove they should be Oregon’s next starter.

“The ultimate thing I’m looking for is: Who can we win with?” Stein said. “Hopefully we have a good amount of guys in that room that we can win with, but we all know there should be one guy out there on Saturdays and that’s all to be determined.”

Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on X @AlecDietz.

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