ESPN leaves door open for open quarterback battle at UCLA

For many, Dante Moore is the presumed starter at UCLA in 2023. The five-star recruit was one of the most talented quarterbacks in the Class of 2023 and his potential certainly makes him the quarterback of the future. However, ESPN is making the argument that the future doesn’t have to be this season.

Paolo Uggetti of ESPN explained that because Moore has no college experience, it may be more prudent for head coach Chip Kelly to choose an older player to replace Dorian Thompson-Robinson.

“For all his talent, Moore has no college experience, and the leap from high school ball to Saturdays is one not many quarterbacks make well,” Uggetti wrote.

Uggetti pointed to Ethan Garbers, who has more experience in Chip Kelly’s system, and transfer Collin Schlee as options for UCLA at the quarterback position that might make more sense than Dante Moore.

“Kelly is coming off his best season since he took the coaching job at UCLA, and while Moore’s ceiling is skyscraper high, there’s a line of thinking that could push Kelly toward a safer choice such as redshirt junior Ethan Garbers, who backed up DTR last season, or incoming Kent State transfer Collin Schlee in order to assure another solid, though not spectacular, season.”

Ultimately, Kelly is going to choose the quarterback who gives UCLA the best chance to win. From a raw talent perspective, that is likely Moore. However, if his inexperience could cost the Bruins games, don’t be surprised to see him take the time to develop.

Chip Kelly explained the starting quarterback decision

The quarterback battle is going to be a tough and important decision for Chip Kelly. It’s one that a lot of thought and effort is going to go in.

“Our goal just going into the spring was just everybody needs to get experience. There’s more than just Dante and Ethan. There’s Collin Schlee, there’s Justyn Martin, there’s Chase Griffin. We’ve got a bunch of kids in there and they’re all rotating. If you watch them one day, we’ll start ones with the ones and there’s a different guy in there every day. And that was kind of our gist is how can we get quality film on tape that they can go back and watch,” Kelly explained.

“Now, they’ll spend a lot of time in the rest of May, June, July before we get back to camp in August of going through what we did in the spring. But you learn by doing, so we were just trying to get those guys as many reps as possible, get them acclimated to what we do offensively.”

From there, Kelly needs to determine who stands out the most come September.

“Obviously, Ethan and Justyn and Chase have been here before, but Collin and Dante weren’t. And I think all of them have progressed. All of them are better after training session 14 than they were with training session one. So there’s a progression going on there that we’re excited about. We have a lot of time before we play our first game.”