The Tennessee Titans have only played three games of the season, and fans are already nearing their breaking point with Will Levis.
You can feel it.
But heading into the 2024 season, the plan seemed nearly unanimous: Levis gets this season to prove that he's the guy. Now less than a month later, many seem to have thrown that out the window.
It's not hard to see why that is. Levis hasn't taken any sort of a leap from his rookie season, at least not in terms of production. And in at least one of the games, everybody agrees the Titans would have won if not for his mistake. That tends to get fans turning on you in a hurry!
But lets take a step back and examine the main question at hand: should the Titans really consider benching Levis?
The Purpose Of 2024
In speaking with many fans about what to do with their QB, I've found their opinion is almost always colored by what their mindset was heading into the season.
So ask yourself: What were my expectations for the 2024 Titans? Are they the same today as they were 3 weeks ago?
As is the case with most off-seasons, many Titans fans started really drinking the Kool-Aid in the run-up to Week 1. February to September is a long time, and when your team makes a lot of moves that you like, it's very easy to throw sobriety to the wind and lean in on the best-case scenario. We're all guilty of it from time to time. And so some Titans fans came in expecting to compete right away with a completely rebuilt team and a brand new coaching staff.
If you ask me, that was always a little too rich. The more reasonable expectations looked like this: can they put it together, eventually rise to the potential they have on paper, and trend in the right direction season-long. A season like that often results in a December playoff push! Sometimes you sneak in like the 2023 Texans or Packers, and sometimes you fall just short like the 2022 Lions. But in the end, your future is bright. That's what a successful Titans season looks like in 2024, if you ask me.
And along those lines, the No. 1 goal of this season is to determine what they have in Will Levis. Any talk of the postseason is gravy. These things go hand-in-hand, after all. If your QB proves himself worthy of the franchise mantle, you're likely to trend up all year and make a playoff push of some kind.
But the key here is not putting the cart before the horse.
Keeping Team-Building The Priority
I won't bury the lede any further: The Titans should not, under any circumstances, bench a healthy Will Levis in 2024. He should play all 17 games as long as he is physically able to do so.
Sitting at 0-3, there's a natural urge amongst Titans faithful to glance across the QB room at backup Mason Rudolph. Nobody thinks he has the ceiling of Levis, but what he does possess is the ability to manage an offense and be boring. And frankly, that's something most Titans fans are willing to sign up for right now.
Will Rudolph become your franchise QB if he got the nod? No. But could he protect the ball, let the Titans war chest of skill players go to work, and win some football games? He probably could, yes. It's what he's done his entire career, and it's why he's being paid a handsome backup QB salary. He's reliable. And fans are yearning for some reliability.
But what would winning with Rudolph do for the Titans? Sure, fans would get their weekly hit of dopamine and head into the office Monday morning with a smile on their face. And for some fans, I suppose all they're interested in is living in the present. Winning right now is all that matters to them.
But this is the mindset that sends you into NFL purgatory. It's what turns you into the Pittsburgh Steelers of the past half decade. Always winning, but never actually competing. If being the laughing stock of the playoffs every year is what you seek, this article isn't for you.
Starting Levis no matter what in 2024 ensures your long-term team building strategy is strong. It ensures you get a concrete answer to the number 1 question for the season, and it puts you in a position of strength heading into 2025.
Benching Levis a mere 12 games into his NFL career doesn't give you an air-tight answer on him as a player. He's still banking valuable reps, and he's on his fourth different offense in as many years. deciding you've seen enough already based on his handful of admittedly egregious errors robs you of giving him a real shot to show growth. That's something better measured in months, not weeks.
And if he plays all season long, you end up in one of two spots: Either he turns this ship around and proves he's your guy in the remaining 14 games, or he proves he isn't and you're drafting as highly as possible in 2025.
Some would argue that trying to win ugly with Rudolph is necessary because of the amount of money spent by the Titans front office in free agency. I'd argue they spent all that money to set Will Levis up to sink or swim in 2024 just as much, if not more than to "win no matter what". The way they structured many of their signings points to this. They spent an exorbitant amount of cash on some big pieces, yes, but they didn't mortgage their salary cap for the foreseeable future to do so. It was a lot of 1/2/3 year deals with mindful structures that allowed for an easy reset post-Levis.
On Wednesday, Titans' Head Coach Brian Callahan spoke on the idea of balancing the urgency to win and patience with a young QB in a new system:
"It's a delicate balance because it's still, at the end of the day, a business that we're all involved in that is production-based. We haven't produced enough yet at any point and you still have to take that with a grain of salt because there are things that we do have to get better at and aren't immediate. But I'd say there's an urgency. There's an urgency to get the things that need to be fixed and make improvements fast. And again, I think that's what makes teams good in this league is how quickly you can fix an issue and how urgent you are to get it done. You only got 17 weeks to get it all done. And so, that’s our goal is to fix as much as we can fix as fast as possible."
Callahan also put his full support behind Levis with no hesitation following their Week 3 loss. Every teammate we speak to is just as adamant: Will is their guy.
So at least as of now, the Titans are signaling that patience is still their approach. It's the wise way to tackle this season, and fans should do their best to adopt this mindset as well.
