Ethan Garbers details his responsibilities as starting quarterback
Ethan Garbers won the UCLA starting quarterback job after a fall camp battle, but he isn’t shying away from his responsibilities.
Garbers enters his third season with UCLA after spending the 2020 campaign with Washington. He played sparingly over the last two seasons, but now, it’s full throttle for the once heralded prospect.
He’s all business ahead of the season opener against East Carolina.
“Get the ball to our receivers,” Garbers said. “Protect myself in the protection and make some good stuff in the run game and let the guys around me do the work.”
In his time with UCLA, Garbers is 57-of-88 passing for 599 yards, four touchdowns, four interceptions and has a 64.8% completion percentage.
He knows there are expectations to compete near the top of the Pac-12 in 2023 before moving to the Big Ten next year.
“You know, I feel great,” Garbers said. “Now it’s time to get to work and win some football games this year.”
Garbers beat out five-star freshman Dante Moore and Kent State transfer Collin Schlee.
“We’re all pretty good friends for just getting to know each other this year,” Garbers said. “I feel like pretty good friends. I mean, we spend the most time together than anybody on the team. So naturally when someone’s similar in age like that you’re obviously going to get become really good friends with them.
“So I mean, they’ve been supportive of everything and I support them and whatever they do, and it’s just a good relationship.”
As a member of the Class of 2020, Garbers was a four-star recruit out of Newport Beach (Calif.) Corona Del Mar, according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. He was the No. 11 overall prospect in the state, the No. 8 quarterback in the class and the No. 112 overall prospect in the class when he committed to Washington.
“Our goal just going into the spring was just everybody needs to get experience,” head coach Chip Kelly said. “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?
“Now, they’ll spend a lot of time…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.”