It’s difficult to get a bead on Kentucky quarterback Will Levis, who has ignited social media and sports coverage with his quirky behavior. He also happens to be one of the most polarizing players in the 2023 NFL Draft.
With betting markets placing Levis in Houston and mock drafts occasionally having him falling out of the first round entirely, it’s tough to understand who he is as a quarterback — almost as hard as it is to understand who he is as a person.
Will Levis Went From Wildcat to Wildcat
Levis’ quarterback journey started at an unusual place: running back. Though it’s not unusual for high-level quarterback prospects to take some rotations at running back throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school, it’s a bit unusual for those quarterbacks not to have taken a rep at the position for the first few years of their football life. Then again, his first run went for 50 yards.
Levis’ experience at quarterback started in the seventh grade, when an injury to the team’s starting QB necessitated some creativity from the offense. They moved Levis, then a receiver, to quarterback.
“That next offseason is where I decided that I might want to take the quarterback position a little more seriously, and things just developed from there,” Levis told BVM Sports.
With this late start at the quarterback position, he didn’t grab the eyes of many Power Five schools and ultimately found himself as a three-star recruit.
But a fast 40-yard dash — 4.69 seconds as a senior in high school — convinced Penn State and head coach James Franklin to take a shot on Levis as a dual-threat option despite most recruiting websites listing him as a “pro-style” quarterback recruit.
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Levis’ ultimate goal was to get into the NFL, and Penn State’s treatment of his style of play meant that he finished his first three years with the program with more rushing attempts than passing attempts.
After seeing the field late in a loss, getting benched for the third-string quarterback due to a fumble, and then losing the competition to start the next year, Levis knew there wasn’t much opportunity for him to generate an NFL pedigree.
So he graduated from Penn State and transferred to the University of Kentucky, meaning he turned himself from a Wildcat quarterback into a Wildcats quarterback. There, he became the best signal-caller Kentucky had seen since Andre Woodson in the mid-2000s and a likely top-10 pick.
Will Levis Wasn’t Supposed To Start
Levis wasn’t supposed to. He competed against transfer quarterback Joey Gatewood, a four-star recruit to Auburn who Gus Malzahn compared to program legend Cam Newton, and the presumption from many was that Gatewood would be named the starter while Levis would need to prove he can win the backup spot over Beau Allen, another four-star recruit.
Having missed much of the spring portion, Levis started out behind the other two quarterbacks, with head coach Mark Stoops not even getting to see Levis throw live until August. It’s tough to find any discussion among Kentucky football media that even mentioned Levis as a genuine option at the position.
Nevertheless, he won out. His ability to pick up the playbook quickly — a complicated, West Coast playbook with all of the long play calls and confusing language it’s known for — was a big part of the process, but having the strongest arm in the quarterback room didn’t hurt.
As Jordan Palmer, who worked with Levis as a quarterbacks coach in his pre-draft prep, told the 33rd team, “One of the things that’s not talked about as much with Will is how smart he is.
“This guy had like a 4.0 at Penn State. And then when he went and got his master’s, he got like a 4.0, again … This dude’s like a thinker, this guy’s a competitive learner, where if he’s got a chance to get a 4.0, he will. If he has a chance to get his master’s, whether he’ll use it or not, he’s gonna go out and get it. That totally plays out in the NFL.”
Palmer’s point rings true — Levis’ acumen isn’t what leads the discussion surrounding the quarterback. He’s more known for his unusual eating habits, which were more one-off jokes than genuine stunts.
Will Levis Is a Viral Sensation
“Mayonnaise coffee” might be more associated with Will Levis’ public brand than anything he’s done on the field.
“It was a Friday before a game, me and my girlfriend were at breakfast, we got our coffees, and there was no cream, no sugar on the table, just a bottle of mayo,” Levis told the NFL Network. “She made the kind of funny joke, ‘Do you think people are supposed to put this in their coffee?’ And I was like, ‘Maybe, let’s try it out.’”
After the clips went viral, Levis leaned into it. He mixed in mayonnaise with coffee for local media and national sports media. Before that, he ate a banana with the peel and an orange with the peel at the conclusion of the Citrus Bowl.
Will Levis celebrating the only way he knows how…
Eating an orange, peel and all #CitrusBowl pic.twitter.com/62FLDjG7kP
— Maggie Davis (@MaggieDavisTV) January 1, 2022
Levis clearly likes to have fun. His TikTok is incredibly popular, with videos regularly cracking a million views. Topics range from the joys of pimple-popping to Kentucky football look-alikes to joking about the accusations that he’s used PEDs. And, of course, there are classic trash-talking dunks.
@will_levis Reply to @andyhuizinga W
He announced he was returning to Kentucky for the 2022 season with a Terminator clip, and he answered a question about his decision to throw at the Combine by saying “because I have a cannon, and I want to show it off.”
It’s not all an act, either. When emotional or heated, he sounds almost like Brett Favre.
Levis on Georgia: "Hopefully we come out with our piss hot next week and have some motivation because we're playing against a good team. It's a shame we can't do that when we're playing a team like Vanderbilt."
QB1 visibly frustrated after that loss Saturday.
— Lyndsey Gough (@LGonTV) November 14, 2022
Will Levis Is Destined for the C-Suite
That’s part of who Levis is as a person, but it’s easy to confuse someone who likes to have a little bit of fun with someone who’s less disciplined or unserious. It’s clear that Levis and his family are extremely business-savvy, as Kyle Tucker of The Athletic points out.
His mother and father both work with merchandise and retail, with his mother running a sports apparel company and his father managing collegiate licensed products. Both of Levis’ degrees are in finance. And underneath that casual exterior is someone who clearly embraces that kind of culture.
Levis regularly peppers his language with aphorisms common in the business world, with quotes picked up from business-minded thinkers like economist Russ Roberts (“better yourself by bettering others”) and Franklin Covey (“make the main thing the main thing”).
Levis has used his access to marketing opportunities with NIL to engage with Chief Marketing Officers and other athlete leaders in the field, making sure to reach out to players like Tom Brady, who he shares a marketing agency with, to get a better understanding of the realities of how athletes are themselves businesses.
According to his father, Levis was even able to negotiate some deals for himself.
“As a Power Five quarterback, you never get the chance to have a traditional internship,” Michael Levis told The Athletic. “But as a business and finance major, a lot of these things for him off the field the last six or seven months have really allowed him to get that internship-like experience. He got to see firsthand what it’s like to be sitting around a table of CMOs, of business owners, and negotiate for himself and see how deals are done.”
That doesn’t mean he’s pursued deals at all costs. The family explained that though he built up a perfect opportunity to strike a NIL deal with a mayonnaise brand, they turned it down. As Beth Levis said in language reminiscent of the business space, “It’s something we’d like to redirect.”
They also turned down other deals so that Levis had more time on task. Some of the deals are compensated in ways that help others, too. With Malone’s Steakhouse, he ensured his offensive linemen could eat out for free once a week. Teammates benefited from free rounds of golf. He also used the new NIL rules to sell autographs in order to raise money for disaster victims in Kentucky.
For a quarterback well known for playing an aggressive, freestyle type of football, Levis is remarkably calculating.
Will Levis Is Just as Confusing as a Prospect
The Levis scouting report is a study in contrasts in the same way. As a player often compared to other improvisational quarterbacks like Brett Favre, Ben Roethlisberger, Jay Cutler, Jameis Winston, and others, it’s interesting that his scouting report lauds him as perhaps the most Day 1-ready quarterback in the draft.
Much of that has to do with his experience in NFL schemes, particularly in the McVay/Shanahan system that has become so popular across the league. Both Liam Coen and Rich Scangarello, his offensive coordinators at Kentucky, installed that system for the Wildcats with only a few changes to accommodate the college game, like the wider hash marks and different offensive line splits.
Levis might speak in easy generalities, but when pushed to speak about specifics, he’ll use a surprising amount of detail in ways that are refreshingly honest. At the Combine, he told reporters that he’s been focusing on specific areas as a quarterback.
“[I’m not focusing] necessarily anything with the upper body, but everything from the waist down. How I’m initiating movement, where I’m using force, and which muscles I’m using,” Levis said. “I’m a pretty built guy, but I kind of realized just as I started my offseason training how kind of weak I was in my abductor and lower core areas.”
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He added that the goal is to be “able to engage those and push through those areas and using my feet in ways that are going to put me in advantageous situations to get a good platform. [Getting] the ball off efficiently without really having to worry that much about the upper half has been interesting.”
Louisville Vs Kentucky 2022 Football
That matches his scouting report. His freewheeling style of play often puts his mechanics at risk, but his upper body has been consistent across throwing platforms.
Levis’ desire to press and take chances that he probably shouldn’t have puts him in the “needs to develop” box for many evaluators. His experience in a pro-style system makes him “an early starter” for others.
A lot of analysts point to processing speed and recognition as a worry, but Levis also scored highly on the S2 visual cognition test, which tests how quickly a person can recognize new visual information, process changes, recognize images, and accurately gauge depth.
The ex-Kentucky quarterback’s work ethic was legendary at the program. He was named a team captain only eight days into practices and before he had been named the starter. He picked up the playbook better than players who had been there for years. He also threw 23 interceptions in two years, among the most in the class.
Levis’ scouting report is a study in contrasts, just like Levis the person. A jokester who is deadly serious, it might be a while before the national media gets a good understanding of who Will Levis is.