NASHVILLE—Will Levis had been in Tennessee Titans coach Brian Callahan’s office for all of five minutes, still in workout clothes after finishing a May OTA day filled with practice and meetings, and Callahan shot Levis a smirk as he fired up footage of the quarterback’s first start.
I’d asked Callahan to take me through some tape to show why he was so all-in on Levis, to the point where the Titans, in Callahan’s first year and in possession of the seventh pick, didn’t so much as sniff around on the quarterbacks available high in the draft. The first play he showed was a first-and-10 at Tennessee’s 36 in the first quarter, right after the Titans converted a fake punt, with Derrick Henry square behind Levis and tight ends to each side.
“This is one of them,” Callahan says, now smiling as if to anticipate the reaction. “Some of these play-actions, some of these deeper shots. I watched this …”
“This is a stupid f—ing throw,” Levis interjects with a grimace.
“I didn’t have to have to say it,” Callahan responds. “But, yes. That’s the point.”
We’ll go through this particular snap in-depth in a bit. But for now, in a nutshell, what would play out on the screen was a microcosm of how Callahan’s initial, and more thorough, study of his quarterback had gone. On one hand, on this play, the coach saw a 24-year-old make a throw that no more than a couple of dozen people on the planet could execute. On the other hand, as Levis intimated himself, the throw was also the wrong one to make.
So continues the education of Will Levis.
It’s been a weird road here for the first pick in the second round of the 2023 NFL draft. He flashed early on at Penn State from 2018 to ’20, but was stuck behind veteran Sean Clifford. His stock soared after his ’21 transfer to Kentucky, with his arrival coinciding with the hire of offensive coordinator Liam Coen from the Los Angeles Rams. Things weren’t as smooth in ’22 after Coen’s departure, which left Levis’s draft projections—after five collegiate seasons—scattered all over the map. He fell out of the first round and landed with the Titans.
Now, he’s here in Nashville, entrenched as the starting quarterback after nine up-and-down starts last year with a lot to prove. His first NFL coach, Mike Vrabel, is gone. He’s fully aware of how things might’ve gone a different way with a different hire.
Instead, this latest turn just so happened to break his way.
Levis plans on taking advantage of it—and paying off the gamble by Callahan and the Titans. Reaching the comfort level the quarterback and coach have already, with brutal honesty on the agenda daily, is just the start, as Levis sees it.
