Joel Klatt Ranks College Football's No. 1 QB Entering 2026 Season

Joel Klatt believes this starting quarterback is the best in he country ahead of the 2026 college football season.

Jan 2, 2026; San Diego, CA, USA; SMU Mustangs head coach Rhett Lashlee (left) poses with Fox Sports broadcaster Joel Klatt after victory over the Arizona Wildcats in the Holiday Bowl at Snapdragon Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The 2026 college football season features an incredibly deep and diverse group of quarterbacks.

There are terrific athletes like LaNorris Sellers and Marcel Reed, transfer gunslingers like Josh Hoover and Darian Mensah and magicians like Trinidad Chambliss that will make the position a fun one to watch over the course of the season.

With multiple productive starters returning across each power conference, pinpointing the best quarterback in college football is a challenging task this year.

FOX college football analyst Joel Klatt has opined on who he believes is the best quarterback entering the 2026 college football season. He gave the title to Oregon starter Dante Moore on a recent edition of "The Joel Klatt Show."

"This guy has experience and he's got gifts that you just cannot teach. He's got the mobility, the ability to rip it down the field," Klatt said about Moore.

"He was top-five in completion percentage a year ago at 72%, so he can be efficient, he can get the ball down the field. It didn't end well, obviously, but that experience is going to pay off. Now he's got two starts in the playoffs under his belt, he's highly experienced, and this is the exact type of guy you would want to go into a season with a team that is veteran around him."

The 6-foot-3, 206-pounder started his college career at UCLA before transferring to Oregon, where he redshirted for a season behind Dillon Gabriel. Moore is coming off a 2025 campaign in which he threw for 3,565 yards, 30 touchdowns and 10 interceptions.

To Klatt's point about roster strength, Oregon will field one of the most experienced rosters in the country in 2026 with 14 returning starters. Offensively, most of Moore's assortment of targets from 2025 are back, and the defense brought back all but three of its 2025 starters.

Where Moore projects at the next level

Oregon quarterback Dante Moore walks off the field following the Oregon Ducks annual spring game on April 25, 2026 at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon. | Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Before he made his stunning announcement to stay at Oregon for the 2026 college football season, Moore was projected as the No. 2 overall quarterback in the NFL draft behind former Indiana starter and Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza. Moore should project similarly, if not better than No. 2 overall in the 2027 NFL draft.

Arch Manning is the other quarterback whose name is being thrown around as a possible No. 1 pick by draft analysts. Manning showcases his dual-threat capabilities far more than Moore, and while that ability serves a quarterback well in the college game, it does not translate to longevity in the NFL.

Moore's body of work in 2025 was more consistent than Manning's, although Manning ended the season on a better note than Moore.