The poll dropped on Saturday morning and the result caught a lot of people off guard. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reached out to 25 NFL scouts and executives and asked them a simple question: who will be the first quarterback taken in the 2027 NFL Draft? Oregon’s Dante Moore got 14 votes. Texas’ Arch Manning got seven. South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers was the only other player with multiple votes, collecting two, while LSU’s Sam Leavitt and Notre Dame’s CJ Carr each received one.
Manning had been the default answer to that question for most of the past two years. He comes from the most famous quarterback family in NFL history, arrived at Texas with enormous hype, and produced a season as a sophomore in 2025 that turned the hype into genuine draft conversation. But the scout community, at least right now, thinks Moore is the better prospect.
Why NFL Scouts Are Putting Dante Moore Ahead of Arch Manning
The case for Moore starts with accuracy. He completed 28 of 37 passes for 378 yards and three touchdowns in his first game of 2026, a 34-27 win over Boise State, and the scouts who watched that tape pointed specifically to his performance in the quick game as an area where he separates himself from Manning. Fox Sports analyst Mike Detillier put it directly in a piece published this week: Moore is more accurate than Manning, especially in the short and intermediate areas of the field that the modern NFL increasingly depends on.
Moore had been widely projected as a top-two pick in the 2026 draft before he chose to return to Oregon. That decision has given him another year to build his case. If a quarterback-needy franchise lands the first pick in April 2027, the scouts who answered Thamel’s poll believe it is Moore, not Manning, who gets that call.
Where Arch Manning Still Has a Path to QB1
Manning is not giving up the race. He checks in at 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, verified by scouts this offseason, with a body type that reminds evaluators of Andrew Luck. He is a better athlete than his reputation suggests, capable of running in the low 4.5s and making defenders miss in a way that prototype pocket passers rarely can.
The counterpoint from scouts who voted for Manning is consistency. His 2025 season had games that looked elite and games that looked like a player who has not yet put everything together under pressure. One more full season at Texas, especially in the SEC, could move those seven votes much higher. The draft itself is 19 months away. That is a long time for the order to shift, and everyone in that poll acknowledged it.