You never want to be the prospect in the green room at the end of the first round of any NFL draft. It’s a horrible feeling, and you have to go back to your hotel room with your family, wondering about your professional future.
Sadly, that happened n Thursday night for Kentucky quarterback Will Levis, who many analysts thought could be selected as early as the fourth overall pick to the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts instead took Florida quarterback Antony Richardson, another tools-based prospect whose inexperience (one year as a starter) led to some messy tape, but whose upside is something we’ve never before seen at the position.
Now, Levis has to hope he’ll be taken early in the second round to get rid of that horrible feeling, and even then, it’ll take until 7:00 p.m. EST before he can even start hoping. That’s when the second round of the 2023 draft gets underway.
Ryan Leaf, who knows a thing or two about unfortunate professional careers, said Friday morning on the NFL Network that Levis actually won by not being selected in the first round, because he doesn’t have first-round tape, and with a higher pick, the “bust” potential would obviously be much higher. There’s a lot of wisdom there.
Who "won" round 1 of the #NFLDraft ??@RyanDLeaf says it was actually 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘓𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘴 pic.twitter.com/gjZfQktW3j
— Good Morning Football (@gmfb) April 28, 2023
What kind of offense does Levis need to succeed?
In a recent episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell,” Greg got into how and why Levis’ 2021 tape was more of a positive revelation, and why 2022 was a relative disappointment.
“I think if you go back to 2021, that’s when [offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach] Liam Coen was there. In 2021, he was a really comfortable player. The Kentucky passing game was built on NFL formations and NFL route concepts, and Levis understood the progressions that come from those concepts. In 2022, Rich Scarangello was there, and he’s an NFL guy as well, but for whatever reason, and we don’t know why because we weren’t there, it just wasn’t comfortable for Levis. Levis was not as rhythmic and efficient.
“He needs an offense like the Rams, like what Liam Coen did. [Coen was with the Los Angeles Rams from 2018 through 2020, and again in 2022]. He needs an offense that features conventional play-action, which is play-action from under center. He needs more defined reads and throws. Less full-field reads that demand higher-level processing traits. Maybe with more experience, he’ll get to that level, but I think that 2021 gives you a much better feel for how he could transition to the league.”
Not that Levis was amazingly efficient in 2021, either — he completed 66% of his passes for 8.0 yards per attempt, 24 touchdowns and 13 interceptions in 2021, as opposed to a 65.4% completion rate and 8.5 yards per attempt with 19 touchdowns and 10 interceptions last season — but there was a more rhythmic feel to his offense in 2021, and he benefited from more defined openings. This will be absolutely crucial for Levis in his professional development. He’s not going to hit the NFL with the ability to read the entire field and take advantage of next-level processing skills.
This 34-yard completion against Iowa in the Citrus Bowl against Iowa at the end of the 2021 season is what you want to give him — play-action causing the defense to cheat up, and Levis had the velocity to hit the vertical route up the seam.
This deep completion against Vanderbilt in Week 11 of the 2021 season also set Levis up with play-action, and an easily defined read. Not all defined reads are short and intermediate passes, and it was clear that Liam Coen did a nice job of setting these things up to the deeper levels of the play.
He's NOT Josh Allen, so let's stop that.
Moving to the 2022 season, and the common comparisons to Buffalo Bills star quarterback Josh Allen — which never made sense to me, but seemed logical on the surface, as Allen was not a fully-formed passer at Wyoming.
Levis now and Allen in his final collegiate season of 2017 both have (had) the ability to turn deep passes into game-altering plays, while still leaving a lot of meat on the bone. In 2017, Allen completed 15 of 46 passes of 20 or more air yards for 441 yards, eight touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 90.7.
In Levis’ final collegiate season, he completed 16 of 39 deep passes for 541 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 75.5. Both quarterbacks had three deep passes dropped by their receivers in those seasons.
So, if we’re going to affix the “Next Josh Allen” title to Levis’ draft profile, we’d better be able to discern the source of those seven missing deep touchdowns.
You’re going to hear a lot about Levis’ relatively mediocre supporting cast when excusing his inefficiencies, and that does show up on tape. If you’re going to throw deep to the boundary, you need at least one receiver who can beat tight boundary coverage.
There were times when Levis’ targets could do that, as seen by receiver Barion Brown on this 31-yard completion against Georgia cornerback Kelee Ringo. Browning did a really nice job of separating at the right moment to get the ball Ringo couldn’t.
And here’s Levis throwing Brown open against Ringo from the slot in that same game — this time, for a 42-yard gain.
The difference between arm strength and arm talent is in part a quarterback’s ability to use timing, accuracy, and velocity to win in contested situations. As this interception against Youngtown State showed, Levis struggles with the combination of these three aspects too often.
Levis can throw to any area of the field in which his receivers are decidedly open, and he will make the occasional big-time throw with outstanding velocity. But the finishing touches that make great NFL deep-ball throwers are not on display nearly enough.
The need for advanced processing leaves Levis short.
As Greg said, that same rhythm wasn’t there in 2022. On this end zone incompletion against Vanderbilt, Levis followed tight end Jordan Dingle through his route, and when that was closed, he didn’t avail himself of any other options. Had he seen Brown’s backside crosser in time, it was open for a touchdown. Alas.
This end zone interception against Georgia had Kelee Ringo retorting for other sins in that game. Here, Levis started off reading Dingle on a similar route — taking the linebacker up the seam — and before that progressed, Levis threw to his outside read, the aforementioned Mr. Brown. Problem was, Ringo and safety David Daniel-Sisavanh were all over that, and it was obvious as the routes developed.
This interception against Tennessee had Levis giving perfunctory looks to his front-side reads (Brown and Tayvion Robinson), then traveling to the back side and making this inexplicable throw to Dane Key — which was picked off by cornerback Brandon Turnage. This was a third-and-seven situation, so maybe Levis thought he had to nuke one in there, but he also had a metric ton of room to run to that side, so… I dunno.
Levis isn’t doing himself any favors with these random plays predicated on a developmental ability to see — and react to — the entire route palette. His NFL coaches will have to put in work to get him where he needs to be in that regard.
The red zone is a big problem.
If we want to label Levis a “winner” or a “finisher” as opposed to a
“gritty, tough guy,” it might behoove us to look at his red zone performance in the 2022 season. And that, my friends, is a problem. Levis threw 14 touchdown passes from the opposing 19-yard line and in, but he also led the nation with four interceptions in such instances, and he tied with North Carolina’s Drake Maye and San Jose State’s Chevan Cordeiro for the nation’s most red zone sacks, with 10.
We’ve already shown a couple examples, but here’s another red zone interception against Miami of Ohio in which Levis has tight end Keaton Upshaw open to the boundary on a well-executed pick play, and Levis can’t time it up. If he feathers the pass to Upshaw earlier, or zings it to Upshaw to make up for the elapse of time, maybe defensive back Eli Blakey doesn’t have an easy turnover. Upshaw’s WTF reaction is one that I suspect a lot of people would have at the end of this play.
This sack at the Georgia 16-yard line with 4:51 left in the fourth quarter of that game was notable because cornerback Javon Bullard got the takedown with a blitz from the slot. Rule No. 1 when you have a blitzer from an area of the field is to check for easy openings to the area of the field vacated by said blitzer. Dane Key had sone free real estate in the left slot, and if Levis had simply capitalized, maybe that’s a touchdown.
At this point in his progression, Levis’s slow reading ability, and his inability to capitalize on easy stuff in compressed areas, could be fatal at the NFL level. Again.., yes, he has tools, but his NFL coaches have their work cut out for them.
Will Levis didn't "fall" from the first round -- he wasn't there for a reason.
One of the worst things you can do to yourself as an evaluator of talent in any industry is to come in with a preconceived notion, and to array your work based on those priors.
There are times when Will Levis does look like an NFL quarterback, and when you add all the physical gifts and base skill to those particular throws, you could convince yourself that he’s nearly at the level of a Bryce Young or a C.J. Stroud in this draft class. Maybe not a “sure thing” NFL guy, but close enough to bet on the traits.
But if you look at the body of work, and you work through how close Levis is when it comes to the finer NFL traits, it’s a tough study. Which is to say, it’s nearly impossible. Levis doesn’t have Young’s mechanical ability to see the field and react. He doesn’t have Stroud’s functional accuracy combined with late-blooming mobility. He doesn’t even have the passing development Florida’s Anthony Richardson showed in the second half of his first season as a full-time NCAA starter.
Right now, Will Levis is a traits-based quarterback who needs a great deal of work in nearly category which separates good from great at the NCAA level, much less what does it in the NFL. If that’s enough to get you betting on the upside and ignoring all the trap doors, more power to you, but there are serious reservations in this room.
That’s why Will Levis wasn’t selected in the first round — because the NFL came together as one and confirmed that he’s not a first-round talent. You can chop that up any way you’d like, but in the end, the tape tells the story.
