Pete Prisco’s what teams ‘should’ do 2023 NFL Mock Draft: Panthers take Will Levis with No. 1 pick

When Josh Allen came out Wyoming, he was brutalized by the Twitter draft cult, who viewed him as a wildly inaccurate quarterback who couldn’t become a quality NFL starter.  That hate carried over to his early days with the Buffalo Bills, with many hoping to validate their pre-draft analysis.

They were wrong. Allen is now a star quarterback.

I bring the Allen story up because it’s relevant today as the same scenario is playing out for Kentucky quarterback Will Levis. He has taken a beating in the pre-draft process in terms of the draft cult. But the reality is NFL people like Levis a lot more than they’ve led on.

So do I.

Levis is my top-ranked quarterback in this class. Alabama’s Bryce Young is the best right now, but I just couldn’t draft a quarterback that small first overall. So for this what-they-should-do mock, I have the Carolina Panthers taking Levis first overall.

Go ahead, kill me like you’ve blistered Levis and back in the day blistered Allen, who I loved. 

In 2021, when watching the star-studded Georgia defense on tape, I saw Levis have an impressive game against them while getting beat up. He kept getting up, hit after hit, and made some impressive throws.

He also had Kentucky in the top 10 that year. Think about that. Kentucky? 

Fast forward to last season. Levis didn’t play as well as expected. There were reasons. He had a terrible new offense with a coordinator who was fired after one year. He had a bad line, no receivers and he played hurt the entire season, taking pain injections for a variety of injuries that probably should have kept him on the sidelines.

So the projected jump in his play didn’t happen. But a closer look at the reasons why show how understandable it was that it happened. Levis didn’t have a chance.

That isn’t to say he doesn’t have flaws. He does. He sometimes locks on too long to his receivers and needs to speed up the processing. But I still think a lot of that has to do with the offensive scheme from last season as well as the many shots he took while playing injured.

When Allen came out of Wyoming, his completion percentage was the crux of the hate. He had a 56.2 career completion percentage, which is bad. But the tape showed many passes being dropped because of his powerful arm and some bad throws because of mechanics that needed fixing, which he did in the NFL. 

Levis had troubles because of other issues, but his mechanics weren’t great all the time either. They will be fixed. He will be fixed.

That’s why I think he should be the top pick. He won’t be. Young will be, and that’s fine if you are OK with a tiny quarterback. I am not. That’s why Levis would be the first pick in my what-they-should-do mock. 

I was right on Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert, but wrong on Christian Ponder, Christian Hackenberg and some others. So do with this what you want. But I would take Will Levis first overall.

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