Mel Kiper Jr. isn’t getting off of the Will Levis bandwagon any time soon. It’s been two years since the ESPN NFL Draft analyst touted Levis as one of the best QB prospects in the 2023 class.
The Kentucky product ultimately wasn’t taken until the second round, when the Tennessee Titans made him the 33rd overall pick. He has now totaled 21 starts across his first two pro seasons, including 12 this past year.
That’s certainly a fair enough sample size to judge him off of, and it’s telling that Tennessee is a mere 5-16 in the games Levis has started thus far. He also threw just 13 touchdowns to 12 interceptions this past season and had a completion rate of 63.1%, which wasn’t even the best on his own team.
Mason Rudolph had a slightly better completion percentage (64%) and replaced Levis as starter in Weeks 16 and 17. Despite all of this, however, Kiper is still will to defend his original opinion on Levis, saying he still has hope the quarterback will pan out in upcoming seasons.
“I’m a Will Levis guy,” Kiper said on First Draft on ESPN2 Monday. “I’ll go down with him. I’m gonna keep swinging and keep hoping, wishing, praying and all that that Will Levis can turn things around to the point where he can be a franchise quarterback in this league. But you’ve gotta have an insurance policy. I get it. Will Levis had some issues this year with turnovers. With incosistency, pocket awareness, holding the ball a little too long. All that. But there were a lot of other factors that contributed to Will Levis, this year, having some issues. Because he did a lot of really good things that went way unnoticed.
“…With Will Levis, there was a lot of good. What (Titans coach) Brian Callahan has got to do is he goes out and says, ‘OK, Will. Go out with Jordan Palmer and work on some things.’ Brian Callahan, go back to coaching school and you work on some things too in Year 2. Because you made a lot of rookie mistakes as a coach as well. Just like young players make mistakes, rookie coaches do as well.”
Tennessee has brought Levis along somewhat slowly, as it still had previous starter Ryan Tannehill when it drafted him. Tannehill started the first six games of the 2023 season before Levis made his NFL debut in Week 7, leading the Titans to a win and throwing for four touchdowns.
The Titans seemed to hand the reigns over to him midway through that year and he got them fully ahead of this past season. However, while Levis had his ups and downs, Kiper tried his best to point out a few positives from the quarterback’s second year.
“I thought the overreaction to the play against the Jets — if you get into the mind of a young quarterback, you kill their confidence. …To me, for Will Levis, from Nov. 10 to Dec. 8 had seven touchdowns, two picks. He was playing good football and he did it against the LA Chargers, Minnesota Vikings, Houston Texans, Washington Commanders and then Jacksonville was his final game.”
We’ll see how Levis fares next season, as there is some buzz about what the Titans will do with their draft pick this year. They have the No. 1 overall pick and could take a quarterback, or go a different direction if they still hold the same belief in Levis Kiper clearly does.
