Michigan Football: Can Wilton Speight Be A Championship Quarterback?

Michigan football quarterback Wilton Speight has played well so far for the Wolverines, but can he lead the team to a championship?

All’s well in Ann Arbor heading into the bye week. Michigan football is undefeated and firmly cemented at number four in the polls behind a terrifying defense and an offense that’s averaging an even fifty points a game after putting up a number against Rutgers that’s best written down on a legal pad and slid face down across a table.

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It feels safe to say that the defense is the best since the ’97 squad (the best defense in program history), but the offense is a little more mysterious.

The running backs are slowly working out a rotation that can balance speed and power; the wide receivers and tight ends are chugging along behind expected quality performances and some pleasant surprises; the offensive line is playing about as well as expected. That, of course, leaves the quarterback position.

First things first: Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh has faith in Speight and that counts for a lot. Coach stood steadfastly by Jake Rudock last season despite some really poor early-season performances, and we all saw what Rudock did during the second half of last season.

Harbaugh sees things other coaches don’t. There’s also this:

Speight beat out John O’Korn for the starting job sometime during fall camp and there hasn’t been another whisper about any of the backups since. Still, the quarterback play has been up and down all season. I said this before the Hawaii game:

"There’s a lot to work with here for Harbaugh and Fisch, and, knowing them, there’s no reason to assume Speight won’t progress throughout the season. He already has a pretty quick release, a good enough arm to get it out to the sidelines and down the field, and size. Couple that with the best collection of skill players that Michigan has had since 2007, and all of the sudden things aren’t looking too bad."

Speight’s stats belie the fact that his progression as a passer has been pretty scattershot so far this season.

Speight has completed 61.2% of his passes for 1194 yards with 11 touchdowns and only 2 interceptions (one of which came on the first play of the season). He played really well against against a UCF side that ranks 37th in defensive S&P+, throwing for 312 yards and 4 touchdowns. He made one great throw against Wisconsin (6th in defensive S&P+), and otherwise played juuust well enough (not very well) to get the win.

Speight played a thoroughly “eh” game against Colorado (41st in defensive S&P+), completing only 16 of his 30 passes for 7.6 yards per attempt, good for an adjusted QBR of 53. The other games were comfortable blowouts.

Despite the team’s 6-0 record, the yards and points that Speight has left on the field have been frustrating at times. He ranks 69th in the nation at 12.18 yards per completion this year. His interception count has been aided by stone-handed defenders and the fact that when he misses on contested on deep balls he usually misses big. He hasn’t looked off safeties or checked for second and third options frequently enough and not changing his pre-snap cadence during the Wisconsin game nearly got him killed.

Those are all perfectly reasonable first year starter difficulties. Missing open receivers is less reasonable, and there are three or four balls every game that seem to get away from Speight.

The other problem is that his level of athletic ability is kind of inscrutable. I don’t think I’ve ever been as confused about a quarterback’s arm strength as I am by Speight’s. For one, he’s positively Navarre-ian in stature (6’6, 243), so you kind of just assume he must have a cannon. He also loves to throw drag or out routes towards the sidelines but only actually gets the ball there 3/4 of the time. Of course, when he does get the ball there it’s on a rope, so who the hell knows.

That could be a result of indecision, which would make sense for a first year starter. He seems to have a wonky arm motion to begin with, so he has less margin for error when he’s under pressure. Exacerbating the problem is Speight’s habit of panicking too early when the pocket starts to collapse and short-arming throws; he throws a few passes every game that don’t come close to his target because he hears footsteps and tries to get rid of the ball too quickly.

That said, he’s shown–kind of shockingly–that he’s an adept passer when he rolls out of the pocket. He spent a lot of time out of the tackle box against Wisconsin and made this throw against Rutgers:

That is going to be a very useful skill moving forward as the competition ratchets up and Juwan Bushell-Beaty continues to have some growing pains at left tackle.

Speight also has a Roethlisbergian way of slipping tackles both because he’s huge and has a good blind spot awareness (though that does get him trouble when he bails on the established pocket too early).

Mechanics under pressure, downfield reads, pre-snap counts, and pocket comfort can all be taught, and the coaching staff hasn’t given us any reason to believe that Speight won’t get better, even if his improvement hasn’t been linear thus far.

There’ll always be hope that he can develop into a top tier signal caller if he can make throws like that. Jake Rudock threw for 1135 yards, 5 touchdowns, and 6 interceptions over the course of the first six games last year before playing himself into a draft pick during the second half of the season, and Michigan is going to need Speight to make a similar jump to make any national title aspirations realistic.

The terrain of the remaining schedule looks a lot smoother than it did before the season. The second half is probably tougher top to bottom, but as it stands, Wisconsin will probably prove to be a tougher test than Iowa and Michigan State.

That means Speight will have time to iron out the issues that he’s had so far before Ohio State. If this team is going to compete with Alabama or the Buckeyes, they need plays and more consistency from the quarterback position.

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Speight and his development, could be the difference between Michigan making the College Football Playoff or simply have a nice season.