Stop Trying To Be Smart…Will Levis Isn’t Good
Throughout the 2022 college football season it was pretty clear to all who watched that Bryce Young and C.J Stroud were the clear cut top two quarterbacks going into the 2023 NFL Draft Class. This was still the case until the season ended. What has changed? NFL draft “experts” have started their sadly now annual overhyping of an undeserving quarterback. Last year was Malik Willis, this year is Kentucky quarterback Will Levis. With absolutely zero reason to put Levis ahead of Stroud or Young, “experts” are ingraining the public with the idea that Levis could actually be worthy of a top 10 selection, some even going as far as saying he could be the first name off the board. As someone who does their fair share of scouting drafts I find this evaluation of Levis to be completely made for clicks and something that has made usually pretty good analysts like Daniel Jeremiah, Todd McShay, Mel Kiper, and Bucky Brooks looking like people just picking names out of a hat. The analysts above haven’t yet put Levis as the #1, but big outlets have taken the leap.
Early on, Pro Football Focus’ (PFF) Marcus Mosher put out his first mock draft of the year and it had one of the worst moves I have ever seen in a mock draft. Mosher projected the Colts to trade up from the #4 pick (where in reality they could easily select Levis) to #1 to select Levis over the likes of Stroud, Young, and others. Mosher’s argument being that while Young is the more polished player, “Chris Ballard loves traits”.
I keep hearing this argument that Levis should be one of the top picks in the draft because of his “traits”, but from my evaluation I have seen nothing special on the stat sheet as well as from his natural ability or decision making. Not to mention, Levis declined statistically in his Senior year, coming off a season that wasn’t even too good in the first place.
To address the traits argument, we must look at what Levis’ body and mind could allow him to develop into in the NFL. Levis stands at a pretty good stature for an NFL QB at 6'3 232 LBS. Levis also has immense arm strength, but has struggled to make throws into tight windows in college, something I believe is the #1 skill college QBs must posses to make it in the NFL, especially when drafted to teams early in the first round who don’t have receivers that can separate well. Arm strength can only take you so far, to be a top pick you must first have accuracy and then arm strength. JaMarcus Russell could throw 70 yards on one knee, yet he still couldn’t fit a ball in to a tight window for his life. If you are only looking at arm strength and big bodied QBs, you might as well take Anthony Richardson #1 because he’s huge, fast, has the biggest arm, and has every god given gift you would want in a QB. Yet people aren’t talking about him at 1 because he can’t hit a WR if he’s not wide open (hence the 53% completion percentage). Richardson is a massive project, and even though Levis ran a pro style offense at Kentucky (Part of the NFL appeal), he stills carries the massive project tag in my eyes.
Going off the argument that his pro style experience makes him superior to the other QBs in the class, this is something that teams have fallen for way to often and something I don’t understand why they never learn their lesson. The clearest example of this is the NFL’s infatuation with Stanford QBs of the past 5 years. Davis Mills was taken by the Houston Texans in the 2nd round of the 2020 NFL draft. Mills had okay arm strength and average stats, yet he was taken so high for his experience with a pro style offense and his traits as a big bodied QB. What scouts overlooked with Mills and are doing with Levis and Mills clone Tanner McKee this year is how the QB actually performed in that pro style offense. Levis, Mills, and McKee all performed average or below average in their pro style offenses, yet NFL scouts think bad play in a college pro style offense can translate to good play in a NFL pro style offense. How does that make any sense? It’s like putting a guy in the UFC after he lost all his amateur fights over a world champion boxer who could adapt to MMA with a few months worth of training sessions. It’s an ass backwards way of evaluating players and it’s my opinion that any scout that uses this logic should never see a draft war room for as long as he/she lives.
If we go into Levis’ stats, we can see that he wasn’t thriving very well at all in this pro style offense. In Levis’ first year starting for Kentucky he had a pretty good 66% completion percentage to go along with 24TD and 13 INT. Pretty average solid college QB numbers, but nothing too special. Although, if we look closer into his individual games that year, Levis’ true colors show. Levis had some pretty atrocious games and failed to use this “arm strength” and ability to stretch the field many scouts fall over their faces for. Levis played Missouri in his second ever game and failed to reach a completion percentage over 60%, finishing with a 55% completion percentage on 18 attempts while also recording an interception. The following week Levis increased his volume of passes against D1 FCS team UT Chattanooga. Levis threw 35 times for a 65.7% completion percentage and 254 yards. What’s ugly about this game is that Levis threw 2 interceptions to the lowly Chattanooga, something that shows his sloppiness through the air. When a quarterback can’t perform well against a team with zero pro caliber players in their secondary, you either have a major project player, or someone with zero NFL value. I believe Levis has NFL value, but he isn’t immediately pro ready like scouts say, the Chattanooga game proves this (Imagine what Sauce Gardner will do to this kid!).
If you want an even better example as to why Levis is clearly not immediatley ready for the NFL, let’s take a look at his 2022 game vs the University of Tennessee. Levis threw 59% on 27 pass attempts for 98 yards and 3 INT. This culminated in a 44–6 loss against a defense that Bryce Young threw for 455 yards and 49 points against. Will Levis is not comparable statistically to Bryce Young and he’s certainly not comparable physically to Richardson or Stroud. Levis is a project and should realistically be a mid second round pick at best. If Levis goes #1 I will confidently lose all hope in NFL front offices. Levis is not a good quarterback and it was time someone finally put their foot down.
If you want to talk about arm talent and accuracy this is what it looks like. Unfortunately Levis can’t make half of these throws. Enjoy and have fun with the draft!
