Wilton Speight named UCLA starting quarterback

Chip Kelly has settled on a quarterback, naming Wilton Speight the starter for Saturday’s game against Cincinnati.

In a week filled with decisions on starting quarterbacks around college football going into season openers, Chip Kelly was deliberately a little late to the party. A decision was announced Thursday, and Michigan transfer Wilton Speight will be UCLA’s starter on Saturday against Cincinnati.

Speight said he would transfer last fall, but he was in a bit of limbo at Michigan as they awaited a decision on Shea Patterson’s immediate eligibility.

Once it was pretty clear Patterson would be able to play right away, Speight announced he would transfer to UCLA to play for Kelly and be immediately eligible as a grad transfer.

The competition for the starting job, between Speight, redshirt sophomore Devon Modster and true freshman Dorian Thompson-Robinson lingered through fall camp and right into game week this week.

As recently as Wednesday, Kelly maintained a level of covertness about his quarterback situation that Nick Saban would be proud of.

"We haven’t informed anybody, because we haven’t made the decision,” “When we make a decision, we’ll let everybody know. We haven’t talked about it to the players yet, so they’re still just taking reps. We’re not trying to hide anything. That’s the point I keep trying to make on this."

And around a day later, Speight was officially announced as the starter for Saturday’s game.

Speight played in 21 games and made 15 starts (11 in 2016) for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, so he’s got some experience in big games.

Kelly’s activity on the grad transfer market last spring showed he valued having an experienced signal caller to run the latest rendition of his fast-paced offense at UCLA, and was not immediately sold on Modster or Thompson-Robinson as the answer.