Oregon Ducks Football: Dakorien Moore Article

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Sep 27, 2025; University Park, Pennsylvania, USA; Oregon Ducks wide receiver Dakorien Moore (1) makes a catch past Penn State Nittany Lions cornerback A.J. Harris (4) during the fourth quarter at Beaver Stadium. Mandatory Credit: James Lang-Imagn Images | James Lang-Imagn Images

This article is a follow up to an article I wrote last off-season were I looked deeper at the true freshmen seasons for the highest rated WR’s in the 247 era. Please note this article references fantasy point. The purpose isn’t meant to be informative for collegiate fantasy football purposes (which I’m not sure even exists) but the benefit of the fantasy scoring system for wide receivers is it boils their raw production down into 1 number. Any references to fantasy scoring is using 0.5 point per reception scoring.

Now that Dakorien has played his true freshmen season we can compare his first season versus other talented wide receivers to see where he stacked up.

Continuing from last years article, here is a scatter of the 41 highest rated WR’s per 247 from 2004 to 2025 with their raw true freshmen stats being bottled down to one number. But now with Dakorien’s 2025 season added to it. Visually we can see that in Dakorien’s 11 games played he was in the upper half of production for highly talented wide receivers with his 546 yards on 38 total touches and 4 TDs. Or 97.6 points.

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And while Dakorien did miss some time due to injury, because of Oregon’s run to the CFP semi-finals he was still able to suit up for 11 games, which for the purposes of this article makes for an easier comparison with the majority of the other receivers in this sample. Here are Dakorien’s stats side by side with both the average and median of the 40 other receivers.

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Again we can see that amongst this sample, of ultra talented wide receivers, Dakorien had an above average but not elite true freshmen campaign. To be precise, it was the 17th best season in this group of 40.

It put him in the neighborhood of other productive college receivers; Mike Davis from Texas, Dorial Green Beckham from Missouri, and our own Evan Stewart from his true freshmen season at Texas A&M. Taking the average season long stat line for those 3 receivers in their true sophomore seasons and it sets what I think to be a pretty good benchmark for what we can expect from Dakorien in the 2026 regular season:

47.5 receptions for 669.5 yards and 5.5 TDs

Now I remember in the early part of the 2025 season when Dakorien was running free against Oklahoma State or counted on to make some massive catches at Penn State I thought my 2025 pre-season article attempting to tame the hype would look silly, which I would have zero problem with.

But sadly for Dakorien’s he sustained an injury in the week leading up to the Iowa game that not only kept him out of the rest of the regular season but slowed him down in the playoffs as his production was noticeably down after returning from injury versus before the injury.

Before the injury Dakorien’s average raw stat line was 10.9 points per game. After the injury it was 2.8. Thankfully based on the spring game he appears to be back to full health.

In order to move from the above average production category to the elite one he will obviously need to be at full health as in football and in life, the best ability is availability.

Among the 40 receivers I looked at as part of this article the players that would go on to be the biggest NFL stars almost all exclusively put up true freshmen seasons with 130 points or more (the figure Dakorien was tracking to reach over 12 games based on his pre-injury production). Guys like Calvin Ridley, AJ Green, Stefon Diggs, Calvin Johnson, Percy Harvin, Julio Jones, and DeSean Jackson.

And that’s really my main takeaway from revisiting this project. In his true freshmen season Dakorien flashed the potential to be one of the super-star wide receiver… if he stays healthy. And with his slightly slimmer frame for a Wide Receier that is a big noteworthy IF.

Before his injury in 2025 Dakorien was on pace to be closer to that elite neighborhood averaging 10.9 points per game in his first 8 games. In his final 3 games after returning from injury he only averaged 2.8 points per game which significantly lowered his overall raw stats on the season and is a good piece of evidence for why per target numbers are more useful than raw stat-lines.

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