The scouting combine is massively important for most draft prospects. It’s where they’re able to meet with NFL teams, get their official medicals done, and go on the field at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium to participate in drills that (to a greater or lesser degree) give evaluators that much more of a sense of what attributes and liabilities they bring to the next level of football.
The combine process will be especially important for Kentucky quarterback Will Levis. After two seasons at Penn State and two more with the Wildcats, Levis leaves behind an iffy legacy, and one that NFL shot-callers will have to consider carefully. For all the amazing raw athleticism, there be dragons. I have little doubt that Levis will ace whatever combine drills in which he chooses to participate; at 6-foot-3 and 232 pounds (unofficial), he presents a skeleton of attributes that some tie to Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
Like Allen when he came out of Wyoming in 2018, Levis is also a quarterback with all kinds of development that needs to happen before he has the real opportunity to be a top-tier quarterback. Allen was lucky in that he was aligned with a play-caller and play-designer in former offensive coordinator and current New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll who set him up for success, gave him the concepts he needed to move past the parts of his game that needed work, and dialed things back when it all got too overwhelming.
Levis will need that same kind of assistance, and when it comes to raw tools quarterbacks, if they don’t get that, things can get weird in a hurry. Levis also might be the kind of quarterback who can’t get out of his own way, and his athleticism and rocket arm might tap out pretty quickly in the NFL. He might be a Tim Tebow type who has a fixed ceiling, and it’s generally pretty easy for professional defenses to reinforce those types of ceilings to those types of players.
So, which is Will Levis — the guy who can be developed into a top-tier quarterback over time, or the guy who burns his NFL team for their too-shiny take on his future? The tape never lies, so that’s where we’ll go.