After a summer of hype, Will Levis leaves Kentucky football fans wanting more
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Game day: Kentucky 45, Louisiana Monroe 10
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It was not the start Will Levis envisioned.
On his third play as Kentucky’s starting quarterback — on his first pass as a Wildcat — the Penn State transfer had an open Josh Ali on a slant route.
Levis, however, threw the ball too hard and slightly behind Ali. As a result, it bounced off the hands of the Kentucky wideout and became an interception for Louisiana Monroe’s Jabari Johnson.
After a summer filled with hype, both locally and among national college football writers such as The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman and Rivals.com’s Mike Farrell, over the potential Levis brought to UK, it was not exactly a Hollywood start.
“I was like, ‘Of course, this is how it starts,’” Levis said afterward. “I just chuckled about it.”
As it turned out, it was what Levis did after his errant first throw as a Wildcat that will have Kentucky football fans dreaming big.
In a scintillating first game as UK’s QB1, Levis completed 18 of 26 passes for 367 yards and four touchdowns to direct the Cats to a 45-10 pasting of overmatched ULM before a sun-drenched, opening-game crowd of 47,693 at Kroger Field.
The 6-foot-2, 232-pound Levis threw touchdown passes to wide receivers Wan’Dale Robinson (33 and 15 yards) and Josh Ali (58 yards) plus tight end Brenden Bates (4 yards).
In addition to his TD strike to Ali, Levis completed two other throws in excess of 50 yards, one to Robinson (62 yards) and one to Isaiah Epps (57 yards).
It was exactly the kind of passing threat Mark Stoops had envisioned when he hired new offensive coordinator Liam Coen off the staff of the Los Angeles Rams with the charge of diversifying a run-reliant UK attack.
“What I’ve been looking for,” said Stoops — who evened his record as Kentucky coach at 50-50 — afterward of the aerial show. “I am very happy about it.”
Even though Levis had started twice in the three seasons he spent at Penn State, he acknowledged he had butterflies before his first game leading UK.
“I was nervous for sure,” the Madison, Conn., product said. “I’ve got experience, this was not my first time playing a college football game. But it was first time starting for a new program, pretty high expectations. I knew a lot of people were going to be watching, seeing how (our) game goes.”
From the moment Levis announced he was transferring from Penn State to UK, Wildcats backers had been tantalized by tales of the QB’s prodigious arm strength.
That anticipation only grew when the Big Blue Nation got to see how the ball exploded out of Levis’ hand on throws at the Fan Day open practice.
Finally given a chance to display in live-game action the howitzer that is his right arm, Levis did not disappoint.
His TD passes to Robinson — the first on a long crossing route, the second on a tight slant — were things of beauty. So, too, was his bomb to Ali.
Yet Coen said the QB’s most impressive throw was the 57-yard gain to Epps.
“The throw down the sideline to Epps, that’s not schemed up — just so we are all clear,” the UK offensive coordinator said, smiling. “(Levis) made a throw because he saw the corner overlap the seam. ... He just flicked it.”
In sports, one’s strength can also be one’s weakness.
At Penn State, the book on Levis was that his lack of consistent accuracy and touch served to undermine the strength of his powerful right arm.
If you are the worrying type, Levis had a few throws — the slant to Ali that became the interception; a misplaced swing pass to Christopher Rodriguez that would have been a touchdown if properly placed — that were not where they needed to be.
UK receivers acknowledge it is not easy catching short/intermediate passes from a quarterback who throws so hard.
“He throws it harder than every quarterback I’ve ever had,” Robinson said. “At the end of the day, you have to catch it. There are times when we are like, ‘It’s coming in a little hot.’ But it’s good to have a quarterback who can do things like he can — especially under pressure.”
Said Ali: “To catch (Levis) is very hard. One day in practice, I blinked. When I opened my eyes, the ball was right on me. That didn’t work out for me too well. ”
The moral?
“With (Levis), you can’t blink,” Ali said, laughing.
In Week 2, the competition goes way up for Kentucky when SEC East rival Missouri visits Saturday for a pivotal league game. For UK to have another 2018-style “break the paradigm of Kentucky football” kind of season, the Cats have to beat Mizzou.
After years when the UK offense has been ground-hugging in the extreme, the possibilities Will Levis and his bombs-away potential bring to the Wildcats are intriguing.
“I like to see everyone smiling on the sideline,” Ali said of Kentucky’s offense. “That’s what I saw today.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2021 at 6:36 PM.
