The national hype around UK’s Will Levis and Liam Coen is picking up steam
Time will tell what kind of quarterback Will Levis will be for the Kentucky Wildcats.
But before the transfer QB — having shed that dreary Penn State color scheme for what Mark Stoops classifies as “the real blue and white” — starts his first game, we know this:
Levis is a viral-marketing genius.
That now-famous video of a shirtless Levis eating a brown banana, peel and and all, has gotten the newly named UK starting quarterback stories on the websites of the New York Post and The Big Lead and made him the subject of a segment on “The Today Show.”
Now that college athletes have the option to benefit financially from their names, images and likenesses, Levis is making a calculated play to use his social-media accounts to enhance his potential income.
You would expect a guy bright enough to earn a Penn State finance degree in three years to know how to play this game.
“I really wasn’t a person to throw my whole life out there on social media,” Levis says. “But now it has kind of turned into a necessity to really build your brand and get content out there to give people insight into your lifestyle, your sense of humor, your friends, everything.”
Yet for all the attention Levis ginned up with his banana antics, that was not the most interesting Kentucky football development in the social media this week.
Slowly, there seems to be a “hype train” about the pairing of Levis with new Kentucky offensive coordinator Liam Coen, the former Los Angeles Rams assistant, that is gathering steam among select national college football writers.
Via Twitter, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman wrote that he is “fascinated to watch Kentucky this fall. New OC Liam Coen comes from the Rams and is very well regarded and his new QB Will Levis has a cannon for an arm and also can really run. Intriguing situation there.”
It was Feldman who, earlier this summer, chronicled the offseason work Levis was doing to refine his throwing mechanics with Canadian quarterback guru Rob Williams.
Meanwhile, Rivals.com national writer Mike Farrell predicted that Levis will put up better passing numbers in 2021 than J.T. Daniels or Emory Jones — the projected starting QBs at SEC East favorites Georgia and Florida, respectively.
Wrote Farrell: “What people don’t know is that Levis has as much natural arm talent as anyone in the country, including Spencer Rattler at Oklahoma and Sam Howell at (North Carolina). Coen is a very bright young mind who wants to throw the ball. Levis could be the surprise of the SEC. Keep an eye out.”
What makes the level of expectations developing around Coen and Levis fascinating is that both are kind of college football mystery men.
Coen, 35, got his primary college coaching experience in 2016 and 2017 as the offensive coordinator at Maine.
The good news is that the Black Bears improved in points per game and yards per game in each of Coen’s two seasons as the OC.
But running the offense at Maine in the Football Championship Subdivision is a long way from calling plays against Georgia in Sanford Stadium.
The fascination with Coen is driven by the three years he spent as a NFL assistant under offensive guru Sean McVay with the Rams.
In the past three years, Kentucky has ranked in the top 37 in college football in rushing and 120th or worse in passing every season.
Stoops brought Coen to Lexington to build a passing attack on top of Kentucky’s stout rushing game.
Coen chose Levis to be the quarterback to make that happen.
“I do think, right now, he gives us the best chance to win,” Coen says.
At Penn State, the 6-foot-3, 232-pound Levis got pigeonholed as a situational running quarterback.
As a passer, the book on him in State College was that he had a lethally strong arm but lacked the required touch and accuracy in placing his throws.
“At the beginning of my career, that definitely was fair,” Levis says. “It’s something I’ve really worked on these past couple years to really hone and get better at. Ask anyone here that’s been around (UK’s preseason) camp, I’ve been accurate and been able to put some touch on the balls.”
If the former Los Angeles Rams assistant and the ex-Penn State backup QB are able to reinvigorate UK’s dormant passing game — and if the Wildcats can win some meaningful games — the groundwork is being laid now for Coen and Levis to blow up big at the national level.
If the two live up to their current buzz once the games start, UK backers will have every reason to go bananas.
