IT’S WILL LEVIS‘ pro day at the University of Kentucky, where the zip on his drag routes and 70-yard bombs take center stage. Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel is in Lexington; Frank Reich, newly hired to helm Carolina, cradles a Dunkin’ Donuts cup nearby. Seattle’s Pete Carroll is here, too.
They’re all watching Levis play perhaps the highest stakes moment of his life, yet the quarterback radiates calm.
In the poke-and-prod marathon of the NFL draft process, the 6’4, 230-pound Levis is at mile 25. From 2021-2022, he was one of five Power 5 QBs with a 61% completion percentage and 22 passing touchdowns against the blitz. “If you could draw up an NFL quarterback,” Mel Kiper Jr. once said, “he’s that guy.” But that guy has also been dogged by inconsistency, including accuracy concerns on touch throws and a surfeit of turnovers. Levis finished his college career with a 66 Total QBR, which would be the sixth lowest of any FBS QB to be selected in the top 10 in the past 15 drafts.
So, depending on who you ask, he’s either a franchise quarterback or a bust in waiting.
Levis’ arm took him from central Connecticut high school obscurity as a three-star recruit and the 35th-ranked QB in 2018 to Power 5 football at Penn State and Kentucky. He doesn’t wield Bryce Young’s resume, the sustained statistical dominance of C.J. Stroud or the historic combine heroics of Anthony Richardson — though each carries their own however: Young’s sub-6-foot frame; Stroud’s perceived lack of pocket mobility; Richardson’s accuracy…
