Wisconsin football recruiting: UW offers 2023 5-star QB Dante Moore

Recruiting is the lifeblood of any major college athletics team, but following it closely as a fan can sometimes be difficult and can often be time consuming. We’ll try and condense all the recruiting news you can use into this bi-weekly (sometimes more) post. It’ll include updates on current commits, including stats from their high school games, as well as news on players the Badgers are still pursuing. Let’s get down to business!

New offer

• On Tuesday night, 2023 5-star QB Dante Moore (Detroit) out of Martin Luther King High School announced that he had received a scholarship offer from Wisconsin. Moore has nearly 40 reported offers, but LSU, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame and Penn State seem to have separated themselves from the pack.

Moore is 6-foot-2 and weighs around 195 pounds and is highly rated by, well, every recruiting service. The 247 Composite has him as the No. 6 player and No. 3 QB in the country and the top player in Michigan while the On3 Consensus ranks him as the No. 15 player and No. 4 QB in the country.

Last season, Moore led his high school to a 13-1 record and the Michigan Division III state championship. He threw for 3,047 yards on 72.5% completion (177-of-244) with 40 passing touchdowns and three interceptions. Lmao, those are insane stats. I don’t know how true this, but his MaxPreps page says that as a freshman, when he was also the starting QB, he attempted one punt and it went 55 yards. Dual threat, baby!

It should be noted that Moore was offered by Jim Harbaugh and Michigan in June of 2018...WHEN HE WAS IN EIGHTH GRADE! On3 mentions that Moore has been training with former Wolverines QB Devin Gardner since he was 11 years old and has also worked with “acclaimed quarterback mechanics guru” Tom House whose students include Tom Brady and Drew Brees.

Moore has an impressive highlight tape from last season. He has compact, smooth throwing mechanics and has the arm talent to push the ball down field. He can slide passes into small areas where only his receiver can get them and can also make accurate throws on the move. He doesn’t appear to get rattled by the blitz and will stand in the pocket to deliver tough throws. This is obviously an unfair comparison for a high school junior, but there were some plays where he used weird arm slots to complete passes like Patrick Mahomes does.

While looking over his stats there were never any rushing stats, which I thought was weird, but there also aren’t any rushing highlights on his tape so that doesn’t appear to be a big part of his game. He is mobile in the pocket and can avoid defenders, but he isn’t going to be sprinting down the field like a Lamar Jackson or a Nate Tice.

247 National Writer Charles Power says, “Physical traits are solid to good, but it is his intangible traits that are elite. Works extremely hard and that total package projects him to be a multi-year college starter and someone who can be an early draft choice.”

I’m not sure there is a way for the Badgers to get into this race so late, but I’d also assume they didn’t just offer Moore on a whim. The Badgers have only offered three quarterbacks in the 2023 class, Moore, 4-star Brayden Dorman (who has committed to Arizona) and 4-star Avery Johnson (Maize, Kan.), so they don’t exactly throw out QB offers and just see what sticks. As always, if Wisconsin can get him on campus there is at least a chance to impress him, but teams like Notre Dame, LSU and Michigan appear to be hard to beat currently.