LOS ANGELES — Who’s afraid for the teenager who’s about to walk into the lion’s den that is Rice-Eccles Stadium?

Who’s wary of what 11th-ranked Utah’s big, bad defense might do to a kid after already stifling Florida and Baylor (and, yes, Weber State)?

Who’s going to avert your gaze when the defending Pac-12 champs huff and puff and try to strike a blow to the youngster and this storybook start to his UCLA career?

Not me. Not the Bruins. And probably not you, either.

Who’s excited to see what more 18-year-old freshman quarterback Dante Moore shows us on Saturday when his No. 22 Bruins (3-0) take on the Utes (3-0)? Looking forward, eagerly anticipating, here for it?

Me, the Bruins and probably you.

After all, sometimes you need a true freshman to get a job done. Like Josh Rosen, the first-year QB who threw for 220 yards and a touchdown to help UCLA end the Utes’ Pac-12 title hopes back in 2015 – the last time the Bruins won a football game in Salt Lake City.

And sometimes, you get a truly special true freshman who just needs the right stage to properly announce his arrival.

Think of, oh, Caleb Williams, then a young Oklahoma pass-slinger, against Texas in 2021.

Remember the coming-out party he threw? Went for 300 yards of total offense in a monumental comeback: The Longhorns led 35-17 midway through the second quarter when Williams – whom Lincoln Riley had been using only on spot duty until then – took over and led Oklahoma to a 55-48 victory.

Williams finished his freshman year at Oklahoma with 1,912 passing yards, 21 touchdowns and just four interceptions. He ran for 442 yards and six touchdowns.

Fast-forward to 2023, when through parts of three games so far, UCLA’s Moore has already thrown for 615 yards and seven touchdowns with just one interception.

It’s only been three games, but Dante Moore is SPECIAL.

87.3 grade so far this season and a 9.4% big-time throw rate that’s 8th in the Power Five.

True freshman showing why he was the #3 overall recruit coming out of HS. pic.twitter.com/5oTkJUr2VO

— Max Chadwick (@MaxChadwickCFB) September 18, 2023

Monster stats at the expense of Coastal Carolina, San Diego State and North Carolina Central, opponents that are in a significantly lighter weight class than the Utes, no matter how banged up the Utes are. (And they’re plenty banged up for what is the Pac-12 opener for both teams.)

Williams is here in L.A. now, of course. On the other side of the city, taking aim at a second consecutive Heisman Trophy and headlining fifth-ranked USC and a Pac-12 Conference that boasts, in its final season together, a QB collection that’s among the deepest and most accomplished in college football history.

And Moore is asking for your consideration. Insisting you make room for him alongside all of that top-tier QB talent.

It starts, of course, with Williams, who last season was No. 2 among Power 5 quarterbacks with 4,537 passing yards – second to only Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., who threw for 4,641 yards in one fewer game.

And there’s Shedeur Sanders, starring for No. 19 Colorado; he’s immediately proved himself an FBS-level star by completing 78.7% of his passes (fourth nationally) for 1,251 yards (second) with 10 touchdowns and just one interception.

On Saturday in Eugene, Colorado will face Oregon’s Bo Nix, who is one of just six quarterbacks in the nation with at least eight touchdown passes and no interceptions for the No. 10 Ducks.

There’s also No. 21 Washington State’s junior QB Cameron Ward, who is fourth in the country in total offense and fifth in passing offense, and his opponent this week, Oregon State’s DJ Uiagalelei, a St. John Bosco product who just became the first Beavers quarterback since 1996 to throw for three touchdowns and run for two more in a game.

And you can’t forget Cam Rising, the senior signal-caller from Newbury Park High who led Utah to back-to-back Pac-12 titles and could make his season debut against UCLA after recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament he suffered in the Rose Bowl in January.

And then there’s Moore.

True Freshman Dante Moore is LIGHTS OUT for UCLA. Keep your eye on this kid

pic.twitter.com/Jf1pJcRb9a

— Fourth and Forever Sports (@Forever_Fourth) September 20, 2023

Confident and inquisitive, personable and positive, he’s shown his work: It’s been obvious why he was a consensus top 11 recruit coming out of high school.

Despite sharing snaps and playing just about six quarters so far, the 6-foot-2 Moore is tied for 28th nationally with seven touchdown passes. He’s ranked fifth in passing efficiency (205.4), behind only Williams, the national leader, and Washington’s Penix in the Pac-12. And Moore leads the nation with 19.22 passing yards per completion.

And there’s more.

Wide receiver Logan Loya’s message after Moore passed for 290 yards and three touchdowns to power the Bruins past the Aztecs, 35-10, in his second college game: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“We’ve seen all of this and we’ve seen more,” Loya said, wearing a knowing grin. “So there’s definitely more for you guys to see.”

We’ll see what Moore can do against Utah. How he’ll do in front of a raucous, sold-out crowd in Salt Lake City, on a field that’s 4,657 feet above sea level, where the Utes are mighty comfortable making opponents uncomfortable, having won their past 16 consecutive games and 27 of their past 28.

It’s a game that could really show us something, that surely will teach Moore something, whichever way it goes.

dante moore’s coming out party to the masses happens this saturday.

chip kelly vs morgan sculley is going to be fireworks as well.

hopefully cam rising & brant kuithe return.

don’t sleep on ucla vs utah.pic.twitter.com/fzm1Uv7vAV

— Kyron Samuels (@kyronsamuels) September 20, 2023

Think of it as something of a could-make-but-won’t-break proposition for the young man, who just turned 18 in May. Who volunteered during a postgame news conference that his favorite movie is “Hocus Pocus.” Whose teammates catch him looking up at himself on the big screen before games, geeking out a little, “He’ll look up at the Jumbotron in the warmup and be like, ‘That’s me! That’s me!’” Loya said at practice Wednesday. “‘Cause it’s all new to him.”

It doesn’t look like it, though, when Moore is out there in his element, hitting receivers all over the field.

“You know, he’s not just out there winging it,” UCLA coach Chip Kelly said before Wednesday’s practice. “He spends a lot of time, as every really good quarterback has to do. It’s a position of preparation and the more prepared you are, the more confidence you have.

“He’s in this building a lot,” Kelly added. “You’ll walk around here at 7 o’clock at night and you’ll see him. He’s down watching tape and I think he’s taken full advantage of what we have set up for quarterback development, in terms of the VR stuff that we do and all those other things. We can provide them to people, we can’t mandate them. It’s just entirely up to them in terms of what they want to do because he’s really gravitated to that.

“I think he loves playing football and he loves everything associated with football, so.”

So, we’ll see what he has in store for us Saturday in Utah. Should be exciting.

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