Background
He is the grandson of Bobby Speight.
He is the grandson of Bobby Speight.
Speight was a highly recruited Virginia high school athlete who was being recruited by the likes of Virginia Technical until a severe collarbone injury during the first game of his fall 2011 junior season that required a metal plate and eight screws to repair caused most schools to lose interest in him. Speight had previously had a medial collateral ligament injury. When Michigan offered him a class of 2014 scholarship on class of 2013 national signing day on February 6, 2013, he immediately accepted.
He was unranked by most services at the time.
A few months later after player rankings were reassessed following his second chance at his junior season in 2012, he was the number 7 ranked quarterback in the national class of 2014 according to Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. Other ratings services also returned him to their class of 2014 rankings: 16 by Rivals.com and 21 by Scout.com following his reclassification. Following his 2013 senior season, Speight (who had offers from Miami and North Carolina State) signed with Michigan on December 13, 2013.
Speight was one of seven Wolverine commits that appeared in the 2014 Under Armour All-America Game, compiling passing totals of 2–6 for 63 yards. He started at quarterback and served as team captain.
Speight enrolled early so that he could participate in 2014 Spring practice under coach Brady Hoke.
Speight redshirted his entire freshman season for the 2014 Wolverines as fifth-year senior Devin Gardner led the team
As Speight entered his redshirt freshman season for the 2015 team, incoming transfer graduate student Jake Rudock and returning junior quarterback Shane Morris were in a high profile battle for the starting job. Ruddock started on opening day against Utah. Speight took the mopup snaps rather than Morris in the second game against Oregon State, which head coach Jim Harbaugh initially said was because Speight had used his redshirt and Morris had not.
When Rudock was sidelined in the third quarter with the team trailing in the October 31, 2015, Little Brown Jug rivalry game against Minnesota, Speight (who finished the day 3–6 for 29 passing yards) engineered the game-winning drive via his first touchdown pass with less than five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
Speight subsequently executed a two-point conversion to give Michigan a 3-point lead that forced Minnesota into a decision to attempt to score a touchdown on the goal line as time expired. Speight had not completed any passes prior to that game.
Harbaugh explained that Speight had earned the backup role in practice in the preceding weeks.
He was a captain in the 2014 Under Armour All-America Game. He serves as the backup quarterback for Michigan. In his only significant playing time to date, he led a fourth quarter comeback in the 2015 battle for the Little Brown Jug.
Speight"s grandfather, Bob Speight, had his basketball jersey retired by North Carolina State.