Will Levis is projected as the third overall pick to the Panthers in this year’s draft. However, in truth, Will Levis isn’t even a top-20 player in this year’s draft due to two critical factors: his inconsistent accuracy and decision-making.

These flaws are often overlooked because he has a rocket launcher for an arm, and has great mobility, especially for someone of his size, both of which can translate well in the NFL. However, these attributes are spectacular enough to automatically make him a top-10 pick. 

For some reason, in the early stages of the season, scouts deemed Levis as an extremely accurate Quarterback. While he has the potential for high-impact precision passes, sometimes throwing  30, 40, and even 50 yards dimes, the majority of the time, he over-leads receivers on these deep passes.

This is likely attributed to the fact that last year he had a problem getting deep passes undercut by safeties, so this year he’s overcompensating. 

Levis’s inconsistency on the deep threat isn’t a major concern, as deep threats are supposed to be high-risk and low-success rate throws. The problem lies in his accuracy on short and medium passes. This is where I see most of his inaccurate passes. 

His most common misses are over-leading or throwing over the receiver´s head on routes through the middle of the field. These are plays that could potentially lead to massive gains if Levis just makes the throw but he often misses these wide-open receivers by trying to lead them perfectly so they can get the run of catch. 

Another common miss he makes is passing behind receivers on similar routes. Either he mistimes the throws or has miscommunications with his receivers.

These miscommunications occur when the receiver gets open in a zone and Levis expects them to sit instead of continuing the route.

Additionally, he has a lot of passes on check-downs where the passes are slightly inaccurate and end up hurting the receiver´s chance at running after the catch. Some of these passes have very little power on them which so far hasn’t caused any problems, but for Levis being touted as having great accuracy, this hasn’t shown except for some deep throws every now and then.

While inconsistent accuracy is undoubtedly a major concern, Levis’s decision-making is the dealbreaker.

He has a few different problems with decision-making. 

Despite having better accuracy on deep balls than he did last year, he has trouble completing a lot of them because a lot of the deep balls he throws are double-covered or in really good single coverage.

This typically happens when he doesn’t see or just doesn’t care about an undercutting safety and tries to pass where even the best pros wouldn’t be able to complete the pass.

What’s weird about these is that on these plays it seems like he just stares down the deep ball ignoring all his other reads even when the deep pass obviously won’t be there and he has other guys open. 

In addition to making bad throwing decisions, Levis goes through his progressions slowly sometimes. This can cause him to hit receivers late and allow the defense to break up a pass, or at least take away what could have led to some nice yards after the catch.

You can also see this in a lot of the hospital balls he throws which have led to incompletions and in rare instances, turnovers.

His slow progressions also lead to him taking unnecessary sacks. It’s definitely possible that some of the sacks he takes are on the o-line, but for as many times as he gets sacked with no time, he has one if not multiple plays where he´s sacked because he doesn’t get rid of the football even with time to do so.

Despite having all of these amazing physical tools, his decision-making and accuracy continue to hold him back.

If Will Levis has inconsistent accuracy and questionable decision-making skills, why is he considered a top-10 or even top-5 pick in the draft?

His physical tools.

Levis has a cannon for an arm and might have the most throwing power in the entire draft class. Add that to his elite mobility, especially for someone his size, and you have someone very similar to Josh Allen. 

People see that he plays like Josh Allen and has similar attributes to Josh Allen, so he’s gonna be Josh Allen right?

I don’t think so.

It is true that Levis has better stats this year at Kentucky than Josh Allen did in his final year with Wyoming. However, stats don’t help Levis as much as it seems at first glance.

He had under 100 yards passing and three picks against one of the worst secondaries in college football (Tennessee), and completed less than 50% of his passes for only 109 yards against Vanderbilt who has one of the worst overall defenses in football.

Levis also has significantly better weapons around him than Josh Allen did at Wyoming, yet still has games where he struggles like this.

Taking a look at Josh Allen´s scouting reports, they are very similar to what I’m saying about Will Levis right now. That doesn’t make him the next Josh Allen though.

Levis has a much better supporting cast.

He struggles with his weakness harder than Allen did despite having better players around him. You could blame the offensive play calling but the play calling was better last year and he still had these issues.

One could make the same argument for Josh Allen, but he just happened to work out. And even that took multiple years and Stefon Diggs to happen.

Will Levis is worse at just about everything in a better situation.