The Tennessee Titans are keeping Will Levis around despite taking Cam Ward with the No. 1 overall pick to be the team's quarterback of the future.
Levis was drafted with the No. 33 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft by former general manager Ran Carthon and head coach Mike Vrabel, both of whom are no longer with the Titans.
With the Titans looking to put their past behind them, Bleacher Report analyst Brent Sobleski officially declared Levis as a failure for Tennessee.
"The Will Levis experiment failed. The Titans responded by doing the right thing and selecting Miami quarterback Cam Ward with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft," Sobleski wrote.
"Unlike other organizations in this year's draft, Tennessee understood that the longer a franchise waits to address the game's most important position, the further it falls behind everyone else. Ward still has to prove himself, of course. But he was worth the selection, giving the Titans the chance to actually compete in a conference that features Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow."
The Titans picked Levis knowing he was the No. 4 quarterback at best in his class that also had Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud and Anthony Richardson all chosen within the top four picks. Tennessee didn't want to think about that this time around, taking the surefire best quarterback in the class in Ward.
Ward will now be compared to the entire league as opposed to the rookie class, which could make things harder. He's in the AFC, the conference that has most of the better quarterbacks in the NFL, so he will need to find a way to be better than those signal callers who have been excellent in the primes of their career.
Cam Ward Emerging as Titans Leader
It hasn't even been a week since the Tennessee Titans selected Cam Ward with the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft, but he's already proving why he was made the top selection.
Ward is expected to be the team's franchise quarterback moving forward, and he already showcased those leadership qualities over the weekend by reaching out to his fellow members of the rookie class upon being drafted by the team.
Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi praised Ward for his willingness to be a team player.
"That's the type of teammate Cam is," Borgonzi said via team reporter Jim Wyatt. "And that's everything we heard about him through the process, is he's one of the guys. I think that's why a lot of his teammates gravitate toward him. He was tweeting at them right after that, but that just shows you his leadership, his team-ability."
Borgonzi is excited to see Ward develop and believes that he has a skillset to lead a group of men, most of whom are older and more experienced than him.
"A lot of that, we talked with him before the draft, he has great awareness in terms of where he is at," Borgonzi said of Ward via Wyatt. "He knows that stepping into an NFL locker room, he's going to have to earn the respect of everybody in that locker room. First, building relationships with everyone on the team is a big part of it.
"But that's one of the special things about him that we kind of learned through the process, that he has great awareness. And I think he knows he has to earn the respect of everyone here."
Ward will have the opportunity to earn that respect during minicamp, OTA's and training camp before the start of his rookie season.
