Explaining why the haters love to hate Tennessee Titans QB Will Levis so much

Seems like Tennessee Titans rookie Will Levis knows Peyton Manning pretty well. I don't know how many questions Levis has asked while crossing paths with the first family of football, but it’s at least one.

ESPN cameras were rolling during a Q&A at the Manning Passing Academy last summer when Levis, a camp counselor and rising senior at the University of Kentucky, raised his hand:

“What advice do you have on the marketing side and maximizing those opportunities while at the same time maintaining the notion of your mind’s in the right place and you’re a quarterback?”

“Trust me,” Peyton replied, “I’ve done my share of commercials.”

“You think?” quipped his brother Eli.

This delightful exchange was shown as a part of “On the Clock,” a pre-draft series in which the Mannings got to know, scout and heap praise and promotion on four NFL quarterback hopefuls who all happened to play in the SEC, a league closely tied to ESPN.

Peyton advised Levis to make football the priority, by the way.

Criticism awaited Levis for that immodest question. Not that it was surprising. Levis gets criticized for a lot of things. He’s a lightning rod like that.

Levis is different from others in a way that's difficult to pinpoint. He was the most discussed, most polarizing – and, ultimately, the most nefarious – figure of the 2023 NFL Draft, and it's unclear exactly why. Some of the kindling was his own, but the fire was stoked into a blaze by his humbling draft-room wait in the first round, scenes that will define the '23 draft for years.

He kept the lid on publicly. But when the Titans called Friday, two picks into the second round, just as Levis and family were walking in the house in Connecticut after a glum retreat from Kansas City, “the waterworks started flowing,” the quarterback said soon after. “Emotions overwhelmed me.”

He's normal, after all. Not some football robot or muscled jock or however you took him. Just a 23-year-old who'd been through an emotional ringer on a disappointing draft night. Who’d wish such an ordeal on anyone? Truth is, plenty wished it on Levis. Schadenfreude seeping through social media, which meant Levis surely saw it.

That’s his turf, social media. That’s where he once ate a banana peel and drank mayonnaise in coffee and got everyone all stirred up about both — and about him in the process.

“He sees himself as like a player and a marketer,” said Matt Jones, ESPN radio host and founder of Kentucky Sports Radio. “Listen, I can't criticize that, because it worked. … He's very smart about marketing. I think that's a strength, but it's also what leads people to criticize him, right? He’s very out there in terms of getting his persona out there.”

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Levis is perhaps the best example yet of being a football player in the NIL era, which stresses to college athletes how their personal worth and success are tied to a manicured image and a social-media following.

He’s good at it, getting your attention. That Levis has played good football at times helps, too. His inflated pre-draft media hype was validated by legitimately impressive measurables – arm strength, size, athleticism – that distracted from an underwhelming senior season at Kentucky.

Still, it felt so artificial, and it turned out that it was. The NFL viewed Levis as a second-rounder.

The Titans either got a steal or they’ll bust badly on costly trade for a higher draft pick. Won’t know which for a while.

But know this: He’ll have a massive audience invested in watching him.

In that way, and in others, Levis is winning already.

Who is this new Tennessee Titans quarterback?

Who is Will Levis really? I look forward to finding out.

So far, he’s two finance degrees (he got his master’s in December in Lexington) and magna cum laude with a 3.95 GPA as an undergrad at Penn State, according to UK.

He’s an older brother. He likes Pearl Jam (a great band), and “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia,” (a great show TV show). He plays golf. He says he once got Mike Vrabel's autograph at a New England Patriots training camp, and that he pays attention to the stock market, though at the same time, he’s “pretty frugal with money.”

Just little facts that tell you about someone, or at least offer a better introduction for the Titans’ new, widely misunderstood quarterback.

There’s a buttoned-up, country-club vibe, sure. But the self-belief is strong in Levis. So is the intensity. He works hard, plays hard, etc. Some may construe his confidence as arrogance, but this is a habits-of-highly-successful-people type of guy. Doesn't mind if you know it. You’d be confident in him, too. You’d hire someone like Levis for pretty much any professional job.

Like quarterbacking your NFL team for the next decade, perhaps.

“We had the opportunity to do so,” Titans general manager Ran Carthon said, “so why not do it?”

Why not draft Levis?

Don’t tempt me with a good time, Ran.

I mean, seriously, who among us SEC football followers hasn’t imbibed in a Levis roast recently? Can’t fool us, y’all. We were watching last season.

And then, of course, you had an overly amped Levis painting the NFL Scouting Combine with bold lines like “I want to be the greatest of all time” and “I've got a cannon (of an arm), and I want to show it off,” per NFL.com.

Had Levis won a national title and a Heisman Trophy, the cocky attitude likely would have been applauded as colorful and engaging. Since he hadn't, it seemed more like posturing.

ESPN's Todd McShay said later that Levis, “Came off as kind of not having (an) ideal personality and maybe some arrogance and some cockiness in his meetings” with teams.

Or as national host Colin Cowherd put it, “Will Levis loves Will Levis.”

Why not draft Levis? We know why not.

And the Titans did, too. They passed on him at No. 11 in favor of an offensive lineman.

After they traded up for Levis the following night, Carthon explained, “It’s a value thing.”

Vrabel defended Levis’ previous season, explaining how Kentucky had regressed around him from 2021 to 2022. Indeed, the 2022 Wildcats couldn’t pass protect or catch and consistently couldn’t offer much offensively other than an injured quarterback for whom they'd no longer call designed runs. Levis was battered and bruised last season, dealing with a toe thing and a shoulder thing and a hamstring thing and who knows what else.

He kept playing for his coaches and fans and teammates, though, even when there was little for UK to play for late in the season and the smarter thing would have been to shut it down and protect his draft stock.

Levis didn’t love himself enough for that, I suppose.

Here’s one more:

After a deadly tornado struck western Kentucky in December 2021, Jones got a call from UK’s quarterback.

Levis told him that he wanted Jones’ KSBar & Grille in Lexington to host an autograph signing to raise money for victims of the storm.

"He volunteered it. I didn't even ask him,” Jones said, “And we did it, and they made a ton of money for the tornado thing. That was all his doing. … There was a lot of that that I think people just don't know, and they just think of him as the guy that ate the banana and drank the mayonnaise in his coffee."

As for the football part ...

So maybe this works, the Titans and a quarterback with his new-school marketing and old-school playing style.

The Titans seem to think so.

I’m willing to believe that the NFL draft process is so misguided that some teams were more turned off by Levis’ personality than his interceptions. But I don’t believe the team in Nashville was. I think the Titans liked the confidence. I know they liked Levis as a system fit offensively.

Futures for Vrabel and Carthon in Tennessee are both tied to Levis moving forward. Neither took the decision lightly, I'm sure.

But I also know the Titans are probably going to need a new quarterback when Ryan Tannehill’s pricey contract expires after next season.

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One hopes that Levis wasn’t just “a quarterback” for a team desperate to draft one and, rather, is truly viewed by the Titans as “THE quarterback” they expect to build around. Not sure yet if that’s the case. If Levis was a “value” pick, the same was true for Malik Willis in the third round.

Willis was supposed to get a year to develop, too, as I recall.

Odds are that the Titans are going to need Levis sooner than anyone would prefer. When it happens, he’ll leap to embrace it. He’ll attest to being ready. Some will believe him. Others won’t.

And then we’ll find out.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.