Been teasing this blog for a while and have been building a case.
All over the map.
It’s never going to be a perfect one-to-one.
So let’s dive in, shall we?
The first several bullet points you see under his list of accomplishments are related to academics.
We’re talking about a top-five-ish quarterback in the NFL right now.
That’s nuts that Herbert excelled tothatdegree in school with all the pressure and expectations football brought on him.
Levis actually graduated from Penn State’s business school in only three years with a finance degree.
This is one of the main reasons I’m a little reticent to doubt Levis.
Just about everyone overthought Herbert, and he wound up being the third QB selected in his class.
The Chargers gladly scooped him up.
The rest is history in the making.
Are we all galaxy braining ourselves and not holding Levis in high-enough esteem?
I really don’t know.
His “good” is really, really good.
Freaky physical tools with dual-threat ability: CHECK
Now here’s an interesting bit.
It’s like a blind resume exercise.
Ball placement requires additional emphasis, but upgrading to NFL skill talent could help him bloom.
3:
“If the draft were based on pure potential alone, he would probably go No.
“[…] The talent is there.
The physical tools are there.
The athleticism is there.
He just needs to put it all together.”
4:
“He could potentially be one of the biggest mistakes of the draft.”
OK time to reveal the answers.
The first blurb is fromLevis' official NFL Dot Com draft profile.
That second one is fromHerbert’s draft profile.
I pulled that third excerpt fromPFF’s draft profile on Levis, which dropped in mid-January.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, Emmanuel Acho’s take on Herbert from back in 2020.
The context of it is so fascinating in retrospect.
I’m not trying to purely dunk on Acho even though I think he’s a first-team All-Pro weirdo.
So many people were wrong about Herbert and/or doubted he’d be an elite QB, myself included.
The similarities are striking.
That latter number is a surprise considering Herbert’s far superior TD-INT ratio.
…And therein lies one distinct difference between Herbert and Levis.
The latter has a reputation as a far more fiery competitor and wasn’t as risk-averse.
You also don’t see much coming out of Kentucky about him being a bad teammate, either.
The same was true for Herbert.
His coachMario Cristobal said as much.
Whereas Herbert is more quiet and reserved, though, Levis is simply outwardly strange.
Thus, there are still lingering concerns about how Levis' unusual personality will play in NFL locker rooms.
You heard similar shit about Herbert.
It sounds silly now.
It was a real thing.
Leadership/personality question marks: CHECK
This is always the hardest one to pin down.
You get it from insiders who report on the stuff.
Said one critic of Herbert, “Tell me why he’s not another [Blake] Bortles?
Big guy, good athlete, but turns the ball over and isn’t particularly accurate.”
That was prior to Herbert’s final season at Oregon.
You wouldn’t catch me dead trying to label Will Levis “soft”.
That said, the immaturity, the turnovers, the “quirky” and dubious leadership qualities?
All those demerits capture a lot of the negative noise surrounding Levis.
No prospect is going to be perfect.
Don’t know if Chad Forbes is full of shit or not.
In any event, this has been kicking around and blowing up Draft Twitter for a while now.
Look at all the guys I listed.
you could also be extremely self-assured and confident without pushing into repulsive, deplorable and or/polarizing territory.
The only dude I’ve seen pull that off and still be almost universally liked is Joe Burrow.
He’s just built different.
I have Richardson as the 2023 draft’s No.
So they all have first-round grades to varying degrees.
Richardson’s floor feels a lot higher than Levis' because of his legitimately elite rushing ability.
I also like his pocket presence more.
Minnesota head coach Kevin O’Connell came from the Sean McVay tree.
It’s a perfect fit.
Also wouldn’t hurt to have Justin Jefferson as your WR1.
It’ll sound like a broken record in the midst of Draft SZN, but it’s true.
So much of Levis' success depends on where he lands.
I don’t think he can go to, say, the Texans at No.
2 overall and turn that whole organization around.
