UCLA Football: Chip Kelly names Wilton Speight starter for opener

In the end, UCLA football and head coach Chip Kelly went with experience over athleticism.

Kelly named Michigan transfer Wilton Speight his starting quarterback for Saturday night’s season opener vs. Cincinnati.

A graduate transfer who started several games for the Wolverines, Speight edged redshirt sophomore Devon Modster and true freshman Dorian Thompson-Robinson for the start.

UCLA made its official on Twitter:

Modster showed his dual-threat ability last year after replacing Josh Rosen when Rosen was injured. Thompson-Robinson was one of the top dual-threat quarterbacks in the 2017 class after a standout career at Bishop Gorman where he replaced current Ohio State quarterback Tate Martell.

Speight, who stands 6-6 and weighs over 230 pounds, doesn’t bring the same kind of typical spread abilities to the field. Instead, he has 15 games of starting experience for Michigan in which he threw for 3,192 yards and 22 touchdowns.

He also showed his moxy in competitions for the starting job, twice beating out other quarterbacks to earn the title of “QB1.”

For Kelly to show Speight this kind of trust tells us a couple of things. First, he plans to utilize a deep running back group for the Wolverines vs. Cincinnati. Michigan isn’t hard-up for talented guys in the backfield, and Kelly will be able to pick-and-select where he places them and in what kind of situations.

Second, Kelly is a well-renowned offensive genius, so the playbook he brought with him to UCLA is obviously a rather large one. Speight, who his experience playing under Jim Harbaugh and his past as a starter for the Wolverines, knows what that is like. Maybe Modster and Thompson-Robinson have yet to fully grasp all the playcalls, audibles and sets for the Bruins.

Cincinnati should allow Speight time to work, as they ranked 87th in the nation a year ago allowing the opposition to complete .565 percent of its passes.

This is also a critical game for Kelly, Speight and everyone around the UCLA program as they head to Oklahoma next week to tangle with the Sooners and open Pac-12 Conference play on September 28 at Colorado. Washington follows a week later, so by that time, we should know if the Speight experiment was the right one, or if Kelly has turned the offense over to Modster or Thompson-Robinson.