Going back to the days of Marcus Mariota, Jim Wyatt has always tried to keep a running count of what the Tennessee Titans quarterbacks have been doing in practices.
For example, Wyatt has said in his OTA recaps that Will Levis has gone 16 of 28 in 7-on-7 reps in the Titans three minicamp practices. On the surface that doesn't sound impressive, but when you take a look at what he has done beyond the numbers in OTAs, you can see that things are going according to plan.
Something that Wyatt hasn't kept track of in those running totals is drops, so you have to go back to each practice and note them when you see them. Over the three-day period, Levis had two drops in the first minicamp practice (Calvin Ridley, Nick Westbrook-Ikhine) and one drop in the third minicamp practice (NWI). So his numbers with drops excluded would be 16 of 25.
Now you might be thinking, "But Will, those numbers aren't great either! He is just completing 64% of his passes." And you would be right...sort of.
See, so far in camp the Titans have been using 7-on-7s to work on two things.
The first thing is attacking the deep to intermediate parts of the field. That means that you aren't getting numbers fluffed up by swing passes for two yards, these are all passes that are being attempted with the goal of creating big plays in mind.
When they weren't doing that, they were working on red zone 7-on-7s which means that you are putting the quarterback in the worst possible position. The defense knows it is going to be a pass and they know that they don't have to worry about anything going over their head, so they get to sit on routes and force Levis to be perfect with his timing and accuracy.
Anyone who knows my stuff knows that I am not here to pump sunshine, but if you have a quarterback who is completing nearly 65% of his passes in situations where the result is going to be an explosive play or a touchdown, that is great.
Then we have the comments about what Will Levis has done off of the field, specifically from Brian Callahan.
Now, before I go any further remember that Callahan doesn't owe anything to Will Levis. Callahan didn't draft Levis, he didn't stick his neck out for Levis, and if he wanted to throw Levis under the bus it would be Levis leaving town and not him after this season.
However, Callahan has talked up Levis every chance he has gotten. We are talking about genuine praise and appreciation, not just the normal coach platitudes that you hear about everyone during training camp.
Callahan and Levis had a joint interview with Sports Illustrated where the two were talking about what Levis had done and what Callahan thought his development would look like in his system. The two had a clear chemistry and in that interview, you can see just how coachable Levis is and how much Callahan has bought into his ability and potential development. I won't pull quotes from it because it is a fantastic article that needs to be read in its entirety.
But something that is pretty evident from that interview is that Will Levis was getting some...questionable coaching (including being told to focus on certain players and routes rather than being asked to read the defense at times). This year, the Titans are already working on building a playbook around his strengths and what he can do well, which brings us back to the OTA stat tracking.
Right now the Titans are working through their playbook and Will Levis is pressing things trying to see what he likes and what he doesn't like. Based on what we have heard from Callahan and the offensive coaches all offseason, the next step will be for Levis and Callahan to sit down and go over everything that worked and what didn't work during the minicamp.
From there the two will start to create play sheets that will turn into game plans similar to the ones that Callahan had when he was coaching Joe Burrow. During that time, there were games where the Cincinnati Bengals expected a team to run a lot of their defense out of a certain scheme let's say cover 3) only to find out that every snap the defense played on the first drive was cover 1.
Callahan and Burrow would just put away the script and the game plan they had for that game and they would shift to plays that the two liked to run vs cover 1 and they would immediately adapt and put themselves in a better situation.
Right now the Titans are just on step one of this process and it is going to take time for all of it to really gel and become consistent. However, Will Levis is doing everything well and he has been earning genuine praise, and that should be very encouraging for Titans fans.