Inside the Education of Titans QB Will Levis

Tennessee coach Brian Callahan takes SI through a film session, dissecting the play of his quarterback and where he hopes he can take the franchise.

Levis on the Titans: “I’m trying to prove this organization right.” / Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA

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.

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June’s almost here, offseason programs are in high gear and the NFL break is right around the corner. Here’s what we’ve got in the takeaways …

• Why Patrick Mahomes is even more valuable to the Chiefs than you might think.

• A timeframe for, and the trouble with, an 18-game schedule in the NFL.

• The only player who was the subject of trade talks at the top of the draft.

And a whole lot more. But we’re starting with Levis, the Titans, and the chance for everyone to take advantage of a unique opportunity.

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Callahan and the Titans are gambling on Levis developing into a top-tier NFL quarterback. / Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports

Callahan’s research ahead of the 2023 draft into Levis was cursory at best. He was the OC in Cincinnati, the Bengals have Joe Burrow, and there were better uses of his time than to grind tape on a player his team was never going to pick.

So while a little film work, and a little more from Bengals quarterback coach Dan Pitcher (who’d watched Levis more intently) gave Callahan some depth of knowledge going into his January interviews, he had catching up to do as he prepped for his four Zoom interviews. The one he did with Titans GM Ran Carthon revealed, to both, a level of chemistry everyone wanted to explore, which was one reason why Carthon pushed to get Callahan in-person for a second interview the Monday (Jan. 22) after the divisional playoffs.

With Tennessee up first, and Carolina and Atlanta slotted for their second interviews with him that Tuesday and Wednesday, Callahan crammed on those three. It meant studying rosters in general, quarterbacks in particular and, as part of it, Callahan watched four full games of Levis, along with cut-ups of all of his 2023 pass attempts.

“Every time I watched him, I was like, ’This guy’s a pretty good player,’ ” Callahan says. “And I think everybody was a little shocked that he slipped the way he did [in 2023].”

Callahan communicated to Carthon, president of football operations Chad Brinker, and the rest of the Titans crew what he saw, which was captured succinctly on that Week 8 snap against Atlanta—Levis had what you can’t coach, and could be coached up on what he wasn’t bringing to the table yet.

Callahan told the Titans, in fact, that a lot of what he saw in Levis’s 2023 rookie tape matched the Kentucky tape from ’21, when the quarterback broke through working with Coen.

“You see he’s athletic, he’s strong, he’s tough,” Callahan says. “He’ll stand in the pocket and he’s got a great release. It’s quick. And he’s got a really legitimate arm. And he will play a little bit in that kind of swashbuckling style. He was trying to earn guys’ respect. He was trying to show people he could play. That’s part of earning your way as a young quarterback. He did some things that I think that his teammates rallied around, which was fun to watch.”

Carthon’s instinct on Callahan was confirmed quickly, and the Titans never let him leave Nashville—hiring him that Monday before he could even get on the plane to Charlotte. In turn, with the perception that Tennessee—with Ryan Tannehill a free agent—had uncertainty at quarterback, Callahan acted quickly. His first call after being hired was to two-time All-Pro and captain Jeffery Simmons, and his second call was to Levis.

He told the quarterback he wasn’t going in with any preconceived notions, which was music to Levis’s ears after his personality had been dissected nonstop before the draft. He told Levis he just wanted him to be himself.

"I remember being very at ease,” Levis says. “He instilled a lot of confidence in me as a player and did his best to explain to me what he saw on tape with me and that he was excited to coach me and that he knew that I could be a great player in this league. To hear that from a dude who’s going to be walking in, leading the charge for hopefully a long time from here on out, was cool.”

And as Carthon, Brinker, Callahan and the coaches and scouts dove into their draft prep, it only reinforced what the coach said to the GM in their interview about Levis.

“I’d told Ran the truth,” Callahan says. “I said he has real talent, real ability and I think he’s got a chance to be a very good starting quarterback in the NFL. He’s got enough tools to where his ceiling is high. If he’s all the things mentally you need to be to play quarterback, his physical talent, it’s a high ceiling. He’s got a chance to be (a) really, really good, top-end starting quarterback. And I believe that. …

“[The scouts] still do their due diligence and put grades on guys and all that. I had the conversation with Ran. Part of it was like, If Will’s coming out in this draft class, I don’t know that I feel like anybody is better than him at this point.”

It may sound like a strong statement to make, given the type of class that was coming.

That said, it was backed with actions. The Titans didn’t have any quarterbacks to Nashville for visits prior to the draft, and they didn’t have big contingents at their pro days, either. The assumption had been, from the start, that Tennessee would take a tackle. That’s exactly what it did, selecting Alabama’s JC Latham with the seventh pick.

Meanwhile, the Titans spent the money they were saving in having a cheaper quarterback to support Levis, signing top free agents Calvin Ridley, Tony Pollard and Lloyd Cushenberry, which helped fortify the foundation of younger talent they’d be bringing along.

So, the idea goes, one way or the other, they’ll know if they’re right on Levis faster than they might have otherwise.

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Levis tossed four touchdown passes in his rookie debut last year, including three scores to Hopkins. / Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean / USA

Now, we can go back to that first-quarter play against the Falcons, and a few more from that game that explain the gamble, with Callahan holding the clicker and Levis following along.

The two paint a vivid picture of where they’re going.

• On that first play, Levis carries out play-action to Henry to his right, and drops straight back in the pocket. As he sets up, Atlanta clearly isn’t fooled. Nose tackle LaCale London’s quickly in Levis’s face, as he looked to his left. London gets to Levis, knocks him off-balance, and Levis somehow wills the ball deep downfield and to his right, just outside corner Dee Alford and past safety Richie Grant. It fell incomplete, but hit Treylon Burks on the hands.

Meanwhile, tight end Chigoziem Okonkwo was wide open in the opposite flat, releasing late into his route, as the play intended, to give Levis an outlet.

“This was not an advisable throw, nor was it an advisable position to be in,” Callahan says. “It was like, Holy s--t, this is not smart. I look at it as I go. God, if Will can just learn that on a first-and-10, let’s just throw the ball right there in the flat. That’s Chigs in the flat. Chigs in the flat is going to catch this ball, and he’s going to run for 12 yards and it’s going to be first-and-10 again at the 50-yard line. Instead, Will’s trusting his arm and his ability."

"That’s a clear out,” Levis adds. “We’re trying to take the safety out of it, throw the dagger behind it. Dagger slips. I can sort of see out of the corner of my eye that the clear wins. I’m trying to pull him to the sideline. Just come down and take the check down."

“The other part of this, it’s a f---ing unbelievable throw,” Callahan continues. “You watch it from the end zone, there’s a guy in his face, it’s horrendous eyes, horrendous progression, guy bearing down on him. He can’t step into the throw. This guy’s 40 yards down the field, and he just sort of flicks it while he’s getting hit and drops the ball right in his hands. It’s an incredibly accurate throw for what was going on. I’m watching this, I’m like, Goddamn.”

Gathering himself, Callahan then summarizes: “First of all, decision-making can be coached. This right here, you don’t coach that. Will’s mom and dad gave that to him.”

• The next play was a third-and-1 from the Titans 48, with Tennessee down 3–0 at the end of the first quarter. From under center in an I-formation with two tight ends, Levis carries out play-action to his right to Henry, then is patient in letting Henry leak out to the flat.

With Atlanta linebacker Nate Landman blitzing, Levis calmly stands his ground, and feathers a ball over Arnold Ebiketie’s head to Henry, who turns it upfield for 5 yards and a first down.

“I was watching this game and I was like, Man, this reminds me of the junior year tape that I watched from Kentucky,” Callahan says. “This doesn’t seem like much, but this is a third-and-1, and this is thrown to a back that generally isn’t a great catcher of the football. Just knowing that, he puts it in an accurate spot and puts a little touch on it so he can handle the ball. Small, minor thing, but just shows some awareness.”

"This is one of my favorite plays of this game, too, just for that reason,” Levis adds. “This wasn’t the premier [option on the play]. We’re trying to get to the shallow backside, have him get lost and come back. We always say if we have the back, take it. He’s there. There’s [a linebacker] in my face, not a throw that you necessarily practice. You got to get it up and down, put it in his hands, just let him get the first."

Callahan then says, “What I kept reminding myself of when I’m watching the game, I’m like, This is this kid’s first start. He played the game like someone who’s played the game. It didn’t look, at any moment, like the game looked too big or too fast. I didn’t feel like I was watching a rookie.”

Levis, by the way, hit DeAndre Hopkins for a 47-yard touchdown on the next play.

• From there, Callahan pulls up a third-and-3 with 10:29 left in the first half. Levis identified the coverage, saw a look, and took a shot—standing in with Calais Campbell closing on him, and delivering a perfect pass down the right sideline that hit Treylon Burks on the hands. It was incomplete but subtly showed things the earlier shot did, too.

In watching it, Levis immediately mentions how off-rhythm he is during the play. The key, though, and the reason Callahan is showing it is because it almost didn’t matter.

"Bad timing, bad footwork, but I like the decision,” Callahan says. “I had a feeling that there was probably some alert here and there was a go route that was versus the press. Great, he’s got it, take it. The timing was wrong. The footwork was bad. This is the same idea as the first play. These are all things that are incredibly easy to fix and incredibly easy to impart the knowledge where, OK, good, you want to take the go route.”

Except that, as Callahan continues, “If you knew it was zone coverage and you just wanted to take a completion on third-and-3, that is situational awareness.” 

And, indeed, slot receiver Kyle Philips was open in the flat, running a pivot route out of a bunch look for an easy first down.

“Early in the game, we got pressed and I didn’t throw it,” Levis says. “Coach said next time we get any press with Treylon, let’s hit the go. If it’s first or second down, take it. Or third-and-long, yeah, take it. But that was in my head. It’s third-and-3. I see press, I’m on it, but I know the situation. I know that pivot’s going to get it.”

• After that, Callahan puts up a first-and-10 at the two-minute warning that looks like, well, not much. Levis drops back off play-action, subtly shuffles to avoid the rush, and puts the ball on Okonkwo a little low. Okonkwo drops it, but still there’s a lot for a coach to like.

“Watch his pocket movement, a little slide away from the pressure, trying to buy himself an extra second, off-platform throw but still accurate, puts the ball in a good spot, obviously it’s a drop,” Callahan says. “That’s NFL quarterbacking. That’s what it looks like. That’s what your pocket looks like. That’s what the throws feel like. It was just the subtleness of how that played out, you’re like, This doesn’t feel like he’s making his first start.”

“This is the play all day,” Levis says. “We’re running play-action off split zone. Tight end’s going to take the Will [linebacker] here. He’s thinking he’s blocking it. He’s coming up the pipe. We’re clearing out the safety and the corner on the front side. Those two receivers, it’s really Chig down to the running back. … I could lead him to the sideline more. The movement probably changes the location.”

"If you’re nitpicking,” Callahan adds, “you’d love to see him hit him in stride on the move so he doesn’t have to stop and turn.”

• Callahan wrapped up the film session with the final two big-play touchdowns of Levis’s four-touchdown afternoon. The first one was good for 61 yards to Hopkins and the second for 33 yards to Nick Westbrook-Ikhine.

On the Hopkins score, Callahan says, “He puts the ball … it’s in a great spot. It’s a big touchdown. I don’t know how you couldn’t watch this and not be like, Hell, yeah, I want to coach this guy.”

“Earlier in the game, we were seeing these safeties getting a little [aggressive] with the depth they were playing at, really when they ran their quarters coverage,” Levis adds. “This is his cloud, and he’s still very aggressive inside. Seeing that inbreaker (route), he’s playing that, and we end up, we would call it pump, so we’d pump to the inbreaker. He’s just showing like he’s coming in, safety stutters his feet for a second, throw it behind him.”

Touchdown, Titans.

And on the second snap, playing the tape back, Levis rolled right, had two defenders coming free at him, and threw the ball back to the left corner of the end zone for the score.

“They’re running the corner post here, and you get Jesse Bates in the post who’s a smart player but a little over aggressive and you get the win,” Callahan says. “To throw this ball with two guys bearing down and just putting it in an unbelievable spot, I didn’t need to watch a whole lot more after I watched this game."

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Levis goes through offseason workouts learning Callahan's offense. / Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA

Then, there was the other part of the assessment on Levis coming out—his personality.

Some of it Levis understands, and some of it he sees as ridiculous. And headlining the latter category is all of the stuff you’ve seen on social media. That he eats bananas with the peel on. How he puts mayo in his coffee. Which, he gets, is largely his own doing.

Carthon told Callahan that he’d addressed the stunts already with the quarterback. The GM’s stance to his 2023 second-round pick was that if what everyone saw on video really is Levis, then roll with it. But if any of it was an act, or a swing at boosting engagement on Instagram or TikTok or whatever else, he should knock it off.

Callahan called the hysteria over it “really bizarre” and Levis agrees.

“It was mostly people that don’t know me,” he says. “Any team or any coach that got a chance to sit down with me and understand who I am as a person realized that, sure, that’s definitely part of my personality, but it’s nothing that you should be worried about. I don’t regret it at all. I still think it’s funny. It’s still something that I get a laugh at. That’s the reason why I did it. I don’t care how people responded to it.

“It’s something that I enjoyed and got a little laugh out of. And, hopefully, that’s the case [for other people]. Then I’m happy about it. It’s all good, and it’s something that’s going to be tied to me forever. A little Hellman’s marketing deal came out of it, too."

The other part is, well, actually important to Levis’s professional success.

The same way teams raised it in the pre-draft process, Callahan and Carthon discussed it as they got to know each other—Levis can come off as, and really can be, wound pretty tight. And the coach was explaining it this Thursday afternoon as Levis was walking into the room. Callahan didn’t stop, or pause, as the quarterback sat down. “Come on in, Will,” he says before continuing. None of it was anything that they hadn’t already talked through.

“It doesn’t have to be head down all the time,” he says as Levis sits down. “You can be relaxed and you can enjoy the process and you can enjoy practice and you’re gonna enjoy communication back and forth. I think those things are where you start.”

“It’s been tough,” Levis says. “I’m just hard on myself. That’s [the] individual I am. I mean, I have very high standards. And if I’m not perfect, it’s easy for me to get down on myself sometimes. But with a new offense, for the first time, taking the reins and having the ability to be the guy, I definitely felt that at first.”

On the flip side was the intent of not just fishing around the quarterbacks in the draft, but giving Levis the job from the start—the hope being that he, Callahan, OC Nick Holz and quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree could accelerate the process of establishing trust.

That was key for a guy who hasn’t had the same OC in consecutive years since he was a teenager and, as such, is more at risk of getting confused during the learning process.

“Right now, it’s our first time as a team going through it all,” Levis says. “And I’m able to live in that 100-200 world, but he’s starting to mix in, sprinkle in the different layers and further the things that we could think about doing.”

Callahan then explained how, from his vantage point, it’s part of not just building an offense, but tailoring it to Levis.

The first stage is showing players everything that’s available to them. From there, it’s going over things a second time during OTAs, and then a third time in training camp to figure out what’s best for the group, and the quarterback. That way, when the season starts, gameplans seem like light lifting.

And that’d be much more difficult to pull off if Levis was in some faux competition for the job. As Callahan saw it coming in, that’s one big reason why establishing the guy he saw as clearly the best option at the most important position made sense.

Which, again, worked to unwind any tension Levis had, and strengthen their trust.

"I think you do a disservice to guys, particularly if you’re drafting them, and you make them compete for a job. Guys need to play,” Callahan says. “They need to be put in a position where they are the quarterback. There’s something about that that matters to a team and a locker room. If you’re going to do it, do it. It all sounds good—He should sit. That’s not the reality. That’s not the financial reality of the NFL, either. You’re trying to take advantage of a young quarterback on a rookie contract, that’s the other part of it.

“There’s something about being the quarterback and knowing … when you walk into the building and walk onto the field, you know that you’re the quarterback and you know that everyone around you knows that you’re the quarterback. It allows you some freedom. Especially when you’re a young player, there’s no growth unless you make mistakes.

“The problem is, if you’re competing for a job, you’re not going to be willing to make the mistakes you need to make in order to improve at a rapid rate. You’re more worried about the perception of the mistake than actually learning from the mistake. I think that does guys a disservice, and I think it stunts growth when you have to be constantly worried about it. If I know I can make this throw, but it’s going to be kind of hairy, and I probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to do it anyway. Maybe it takes a hell of a throw, but I can coach off that.”

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“It’s the first time in my career where I’ve felt comfortable going to a coach and suggesting something, because I feel like I’m comfortable enough with the offense to where I know the machinations of it.”

- Will Levis

It’d be silly, of course, to say in May that this will all turn out like things did for Callahan, Zac Taylor and Pitcher in Cincinnati with Burrow. Levis is far from that, which, of course, is something he’d readily admit.

But, obviously, all of these guys think that by doing things this way, like Callahan did with Burrow, Levis is getting his best chance to get there. And that’s something Levis feels every day, even in May.

“It’s the first time in my career where I’ve felt comfortable going to a coach and suggesting something, because I feel like I’m comfortable enough with the offense to where I know the machinations of it,” Levis says. “That’s been cool for me, to be able to speak my mind. And even if they say no, I know at least I tried and we talked about it.”

That effectively means that Callahan’s intent, to accelerate Levis’s development by getting him to trust his coaches and make and learn from mistakes, is being carried out.

For now, it’s created a situation where both Levis and Callahan answer quickly when I ask whether they think that the NFL missed on the ex-Kentucky star by letting him fall all the way to the 33rd slot in the 2023 draft.

“Yeah,” Levis says, smiling.

“I do, too,” Callahan says.

Even better, now Levis has the chance to reward the people around him for having that faith in him—both those who were with him last year, and those that are here now.

“It definitely leaves a little bit of a chip on my shoulder and makes me want to go out there and work and keep showing people that teams might have made a mistake by not taking me,” Levis said. “Hopefully I’m that guy that they talk about that did slip, and I can be that example for other kids that are in that same position in the green room like me."

"There’s a part of that, I feel it from Will,” Callahan adds. “I don’t feel this, I’m going to show the world that they were all wrong. I don’t feel that. What I more feel, and this is just my opinion of how I see his demeanor, it’s more about I’m trying to prove these people right.”

"I’m trying to prove this organization right,” Levis says.

And the Titans are giving him every opportunity now to do just that.