Injured Tight End Quentin Moore Still Not Close to Returning

The Huskies might have to redshirt him and bring him back next season.

Tight end Quentin Moore is helped off the field by his UW teammates. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Entering a bye week, University of Washington football coach Jedd Fisch wasn't hopeful the layoff still would be enough to enable senior tight end Quentin Moore to return from a knee injury and play against Indiana game on Oct. 26. He even acknowledged for the first time that a redshirt is possible for the former starter.

The 6-foot-4, 257-pound Moore was hurt in the second quarter of the season opener against Weber State, when a defender -- who should have been in the game but wasn't -- left the sideline and blindsided the tight end who was running with a reception.

As he is wont to do at times and this runs counter to a lot of coaches, Fisch even identified the injury, which didn't require surgery, as a medial collateral ligament sprain or strain.

"I think we'll have to see what it looks like," the coach said of Moore's return. "He's in that spot where it was a pretty substantial MCL injury and we're working through it."

After playing at a Kansas JC for two years, Moore has spent the past four with the Huskies and can redshirt if he doesn't appear in more than four regular-season games this fall, and his return in 2025 would make him a seventh-year college player.

"Rght now, he's not where he hoped he would be, but he's progressing at a good level," Fisch said of the tight end.

Fisch also revealed that injured sophomore tight end Ryan Otton won't play at all this season; sophomore wide receiver Kevin Clark Jr. has been medically cleared to return for the week of the USC game on Nov. 2; junior edge rusher Zach Durfee should be available to return for the Indiana game from a toe injury; and junior offensive tackle Maximus McCree was meeting with a hand surgeon on Monday after dislocating his thumb in the 40-16 loss to Iowa.

While the coach didn't spell out Otton's injury, the player seemed to grab at his shoulder in spring ball and have issues there. The younger brother of Cade Otton, the former Husky tight end now in the NFL, he has appeared in just two games over an injury-riddled three seasons.

Clark, an Arizona transfer, had to be helped off the field during the Aug. 17 night scrimmage with what appeared to be a knee injury and he's been working to get back ever since.

Durfee sat out the Iowa game with his lingering toe injury, his second miss in the past four UW outings, but he's expected to play against the Hoosiers.

The 6-foot-6, 295-pound McCree left the Iowa game on the eighth play of the Huskies' opening offensive series and didn't return. An Iowa JC transfer, he had started four consecutive UW outings. He won't need surgery, but it's unclear if he came make it back for the Indiana game.

"That's up to the hand surgeon," Fisch said.

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