As you likely expected, Zach Calzada has been named the starting quarterback for the Wildcats to start the season. It’s currently Week 1 and the first official depth chart has been released, announcing so.

The offseason quarterback battle was a good one by all reports but it’s come to an end and has chosen its winner — the Incarnate Word transfer.

Zach was the portal QB they went and got to replace the departing Brock Vandagriff last season while still overseeing the development of Cutter within their system. But, through the spring and summer camps, Boley has given the staff a lot of evidence of why he could’ve also been chosen as the starter. It’s been reported that he’s played great consistently throughout his reps on offense, making the most of his opportunity to claim the job. Even if that did come against second-string competition, it feels like this football program had one of their closest competitions between quarterbacks as it geared towards the regular season.

It’s been presumed for a long time now that Calzada was likely going to be the starter, but just earlier this month that staff made it clear that the decision hadn’t been made yet as many had already suggested. Fast forward to Mark Stoops’ routine game week Monday presser, he decided to elaborate their decisioning to go with the seventh-year player over the redshirt freshman, officially.

“The big thing is, it wasn’t what Zach (Calzada) wasn’t doing. I think it was Cutter (Boley) really playing well, in particular down the stretch of camp, I’d say the last 10 days. He just seemed so much more comfortable, so much more confident, and playing at a higher level. I think they both were playing good. We need that as you know. It’s a very difficult schedule that we have in front of us. We need all hands on deck, so, I’m quite confident in both of those guys.”

With Zach Calzada being the guy in charge, it’s time to start trying to win some football games. We’re now under 5 days until kickoff as Kentucky hosts Toledo at Kroger Field this Saturday. The game will start at 12:45 ET and the home team has been surprisingly betted down to just a 7.5-point favorite on DraftKings.

We’ll see how that one held up come late Saturday afternoon.

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