UCLA Football: 3 takeaways from close win over Arizona
By Zach Bigalke
UCLA football extended its winning streak to two straight games as they took down Arizona. Here are three things we learned from the Saturday showdown in Pasadena.
On Saturday night in the #Pac12AfterDark game of the day, Arizona mounted a furious comeback in vain. UCLA held on to a halftime lead, allowing the Wildcats to chip away and even take the lead at one point in the second half. But it proved insufficient in the end, as the Bruins capped Week 8 with their second consecutive victory in conference play.
Chip Kelly has momentum going in Pasadena, after his Bruins have turned the corner and started to get results. Kelly has plenty to keep him up this evening, though, because not everything went perfectly for the Bruins in the takedown of Arizona.
What should we take away from this Pac-12 contest at the Rose Bowl? Here are three things we learned from the battle between the two divisional rivals.
1. Wilton Speight offers security but little dynamism at quarterback
When Dorian Thompson-Robinson left the field in the second quarter after taking a punishing sack, plenty of UCLA fans gasped in panic. Thompson-Robinson has evolved into a dynamic passer, and he was putting on another show on Saturday night against Arizona. When he was forced to leave the game, Thompson-Robinson had already thrown for 103 yards and a touchdown on 5-of-8 passing.
After the starter went down, in came Michigan transfer Wilton Speight to take over under center. Speight provided the security blanket he was intended to offer when Chip Kelly snatched him away as a graduate transfer from the Wolverines. But the quarterback also failed to equal the productivity of the man he came into replace.
Speight finished the game with 204 yards and two touchdowns on 17-of-27 passing. The quarterback refrained from throwing any interceptions, and he did throw a critical third-down conversion with just over three minutes remaining in the close contest. But Speight also averaged 5.3 fewer yards per passing attempt than Thompson-Robinson.
The former Michigan man got the job done, but he offers nowhere near the level of dynamic offensive production that Thompson-Robinson brings to the table.