The Good, The Fad, and The Ugly: Will Levis

All the sports writers that you see, are talking about how Will Levis will be a first round pick, but it takes more than just a massive arm and quick feet to accomplish this.

Not to mention, quarterbacks are notoriously over drafted. 

I am definitely new to this, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what a franchise quarterback looks like. So, I am gonna stir the pot a little bit, about the University of Kentucky gunslinger. 

So many college quarterbacks these these days are imitating Patrick Mahomes, and his brand of schoolyard play. It’s exciting, fans love it, and it’s fun as heck to watch. The edge of the seat and the cardiac moments that just don’t go away. The moments that are always burnt in your memory. 

Nowadays, everyone thinks that they can play that brand of football. The state of play RPO action that has also become the rage lately, just does not cut it for some fans.

There is nothing that beats good old fashioned solid mechanics, from top to bottom. The guys who can hit the field, and tear down the opposition physically, mentally, and with technical efficiency. 

Gunslingers are far from a new thing by any sense of the imagination. Anyone can go out there and throw it around like they are on a playground, but that only goes so far.

Don’t get me wrong, I love gunslingers. There are good ones, and bad ones. That is exactly what I have seen with Levis. For every good thing that comes out of him, there was something bad to counter act it. The problem(s) start at the snap.

Levis thinks that he can bail himself out of any situation with just his arm, and his athleticism.

There is no doubt about Levis’ size, and athleticism, standing 6’3” 232 pounds. He definitely looks the part, and he is definitely not afraid of contact. However, at 23 years old, he is one of the oldest prospects at his position. Those hits will start adding up. 

It is still early in the 2022 season, but I have still yet to have a quarterback jump off of the screen at me – – not CJ Stroud, not Bryce Young, and not even Levis.

Levis desperately needs to clean up his mechanics. They are terrible. He takes way too many chances. He consistently throws off of his back foot and throws with bad arm angles. Still, Levis has one of the best arms in the draft. However, he throws with a funky low release that causes a lot of his passes to be batted at the line of scrimmage. His ball placement leaves a heck of a lot to be desired.

When Levis sets up and drives a throw properly, he can make any throw he needs to on the field. He also constantly makes throws without setting his feet, using only arm strength, in attempts to bail himself out of trouble since he tends to hold onto the ball too long.

For everything that Levis does well, he does something boneheaded.

Levis’ toughness is second to none, and that is something that I actually love about him. He fights for every yard that he can get. However, on the NFL stage he will have defenders trying to take his head off, ala Cam Newton. Plus, he does not quite have Newton’s size. If he keeps playing with this reckless abandon, his career will almost certainly be shortened.

After losing wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson to the NFL draft last year, Levis has fewer weapons at his disposal. In the games that I reviewed, his receivers were plagued by drops. He also throws a ton of interceptions. Consistently starring down his receivers and missing proper ball placement will do that. He holds on to the ball, and throws behind the receiver a lot.

We are only halfway into the 2022 season, but after taking it to #12 ranked Florida, his Wildcats lost two games in a row to #14 ranked Ole Miss, and then they were handled by an unranked, Spencer Rattler led South Carolina team.

This is inconsistency at its finest.

At this point, I would grade him as a fifth round pick. As typical with quarterbacks, someone will take him too high. He has the potential, and he definitely has the tenacity.

It’s just gonna take a ton of work to get to the point where he can play in the NFL. 

On a positive note, he looks the part physically. He has all of the tools to survive. Levis is as tough as they come.

However, this is just not enough to succeed in the National Football League.

The Kentucky games that I evaluated were Georgia 2021, Ole Miss 2022, and Northern Illinois 2022 (click to watch games viewed to form this evaluation).

The author, William Yanish, has been a football fan since he was knee high to a grasshopper. He played football until his body wouldn’t let him any longer at the tender young age of 17. He is an aspiring sports writer and author, who covers the NFL Draft for firstroundmock.com. Yanish attended Colorado Mesa University on the western slope of Colorado.