How will Will Levis get on in the NFL?

It was a difficult draft weekend for Will Levis. But in the end, after the disappointment of Thursday night, the Kentucky QB has his place in the NFL as a quarterback for the Tennessee Titans.

Having been speculated to go as high as second overall by many, Levis slipped into the second round where the Titans moved into a position to acquire him. He’s a polished passer and we know a lot about his arm strength, but can he take his game to the next level as a pro?

What can we expect?

The first thing we heard about the player coming out of college was the arm. A firehose comparable to Matthew Stafford; natural, quick, crisp, and powerful. Quarterback coaches, draftniks, and general managers delighted at the way Levis threw the football.

The second thing you heard about Levis was that he drank mayo in coffee, and ate bananas whole, peel and all. And posed shirtless in front of a mirror just so he can take a selfie.

You also heard tidbits from NFL meetings that were all over the place. One minute the Texans were in love, the next an anonymous GM was calling him “entitled.” Yet another questioned why on earth he could not replace Penn State future UDFA Sean Clifford while under James Franklin. Another noted the Vikings met with him extensively, and Head Coach Kevin O’Connell even asked him to hold a football upright.

All this culminated in many mock drafts including him in the top 10 picks. A unanimous consensus emerged right before draft night-at least among media types-that the Colts were destined to take Levis at 4. It seemed like Levis had a suitor in the right place; after all, Steichen had sent a private staff convoy to do a private workout with him.

Then the Colts took Anthony Richardson, athlete-freak extraordinaire, and Levis tumbled all the way out of the first round.

Levis is a strange character in the history of NFL Draft quarterbacks. You heard about his upside; yet PFF noted his strange lack of big-time throws. You heard about the arm; yet Kentucky’s offense was strangely conservative, particularly after the departure of Liam Cohen along with a substantial portion of Kentucky’s offensive talent.

Say what you will about his off the field antics, though, because Will Levis has attracted all sorts of attention for having one of the quickest, most powerful releases out of this draft class. And it shows. And at one point, it seemed like many people inside and outside the league were salivating over it, insistent that whatever downside he had was perfectly fixable.

So how did Levis tumble? The answer lies in an on the field analysis of where exactly his strengths and weaknesses lie as a passer. For all of the good in Levis’ game, people have mistaken him as a high ceiling prospect. I actually believe the opposite is true.

The gamble that the Titans took at pick 33 was that Levis would be the perfect scheme fit, and that they could limit his downsides. As you will read, Levis is an extremely good quarterback within structure and rhythm. It is when things go wrong that he struggles.

The very good

The appeal of Levis comes primarily from an extremely quick, polished, and dare I say violent throwing arm.

Levis can sling it. He has all the power you need to make scouts drool. It also shows up on go-balls. Most quarterbacks need to take one hitch up the pocket, and maybe two. All Levis needs is to flip his hips, and it’s out and up. A key example is this throw against Georgia, where he is all the way backed up in his end zone.

Levis can also dissect where to go pre-snap against coverages that he sees at that point, and immediately take all of the requisite motions with his hips and feet to get to the read extremely quickly. An example is this throw against Northern Illinois, where he sees a 7-defender zone look with 2 safeties suddenly dropping deep, and knows that his crosser will be wide open:

On another throw, he correctly identifies-due to a signal and shift from a safety to his left-that a coverage that could feasibly be off-man is instead another zone look. He immediately pivots his front foot out of a one-step drop, and perfectly aims a stick route to the far right hash-WITH a defender prepared to stop the ball in the flat.

Levis also shows identical toughness to a Cat Bulldozer. On an option run vs LSU in 2021, Levis reads during the ball fake that both linebackers in the box are manning up on either running back. When taking it himself, his raw power as a runner lets him drag just about everyone with him.

Levis also shows the ability to ballfake to devastating effect. Another play against LSU shows him fake a manned-up defensive back with a toss to the running back, before throwing to a busted-open Kentucky receiver on a rudimentary seam route.

Levis is an extremely good quarterback when he can predict what will happen. He shows an extremely accurate and powerful arm, an ability to punish defenses on designed runs with both speed and intense physicality, and the ideal ball-fake skills for play action and the RPO game.

In short: Levis is the ultimate “prototypical prospect”, in terms of size, arm strength, knowledge of scheme, and athleticism.

And yet, the film shows an almost unprecedented lack of skill under duress, when Levis can’t predict what’s happening. In this department, he is one of the more flawed quarterbacks in recent draft classes.

The very ugly

There are several things to get to here, but I will limit it to three main points: footwork, panicked judgment, and a strange over-eagerness to try and run directly through defensive fronts.

For this, let’s examine Levis’s travesty of a game against Tennessee in 2022.

On the very first throw, Levis is about to make a nice pass to an open checkdown in the middle of the field. Not only does the pocket pressure force him to shift to his left, a defender leers right up behind the check while this happens.

Instead of quickly planting and throwing, Levis panics, jostles his feet forward as if to scramble, and fires way above his second read past the first down sticks. To double the issue, the receiver is well in the middle of a closing two-safety window by the time Levis throws this pass, resulting in a dangerous decision in terms of both decision making and ball placement.

A throw soon afterward shows Levis boot out to his right, reading a deep crosser with a wide open flat underneath. What Levis should do here is see the pressure right in front of his face, and immediately hit the flat-there is enough yardage in front of the receiver to make an easy catch and run to move the sticks. Instead, Levis overreacts and twists his body too far to his left without adjusting his feet, and throws a pass much too far behind his intended target-WITH a safety beaming down on him.

Levis has a tendency to not set his feet when he has to make a throw under duress. This is also symptomatic of his inability to quickly process a sudden change in coverage, or a lack of a clear read, that he does not expect.

Another massive example of this is a red zone play where Levis has a similar concept; play action, he boots to his right, there’s a crosser and a flat underneath it. This time, Tennessee is in blanket man coverage with only 1 safety, and both routes get killed on arrival.

Instead of either running for a touchdown himself, or throwing the ball away, Levis decides he’s going to have a fun time getting his rocks punched out of him. He again overreacts to a coverage linebacker barrelling him down, and pivots back to the pocket. He then tries to ram his way through two defensive linemen straight down the middle of the field, taking a completely unnecessary battering.

While one can admire his toughness here, this is not something that sustains itself in the NFL, where every defender at every level is bigger and faster than they are in college, and your injury risk goes up. Additionally, Levis has no chance of picking up anything meaningful if there is just proper tackling technique-especially from NFL defensive linemen.

Even more concerning, though, is his creation of turnovers due to late decision making under strain. A damning example of this is a 3rd and 7 play midway through the 3rd quarter. Levis tries to read out a quarters zone coverage, but doesn’t seem to have much open-a situation that normally calls for anything from a scramble to a throwaway.

While I will hold it against Kentucky a bit for not having a meaningful checkdown option on this play, I critique Levis even more for drifting way to his left on his toes, and forcing a ball low to a receiver far onto the left side of the field. Not only is this receiver forced to come back for the ball after previously running a vertical route down the sideline, but it falls right into the hands of the corner-almost exactly where he needs to be for the pick.

There are throws like this all over Levis’s film, where, for all of his arm talent, you feel like he doesn’t use it at all like he should if something goes wrong. I believe this is the primary reason for his tumble, more than just the decisions to run and take hits or the lack of feet awareness.

Mental processing is a feature of a quarterback’s game that is harder to fix than something mechanical; it requires more rewiring in the film room and off the field than just simple repetition. NFL teams likely recognized that, and passed on Levis over better players that were available.

Will it work out for Levis as a pro?

The Titans are gambling that they can put Will Levis in the right environment to succeed. To be fair, they are a team that focuses primarily on running Derrick Henry, and then using play action bootlegs to gain favorable matchups outside. This is a scheme that Levis has shown many of his best plays in, and will likely work in his favor.

By the same token, the Titans are also gambling that Levis will, at a minimum, correct his issues with judgment and footwork enough to not actively hamper the Titans from functioning. That is perhaps a harder task than developing someone like Anthony Richardson, who mostly shows a need for mechanical polish.

It is for these reasons that I think we’ve got the narrative on Levis all wrong. I don’t think teams evaluated Levis because of his ceiling. I think they thought of him as a quarterback who can operate a schemed, zone read/play action offense to maximum effect, and debated whether they could limit the woes that occur outside of this structure.

Levis is a Rorschach test for what kind of a team you want to build-there is a very clear thing he can do, and there is a very clear thing that, at minimum, will take years to teach. The Titans, given how they were built with a gargantuan in the backfield, and an extremely physical demeanor everywhere on the field, were the team most willing to hedge that bet.