Will Levis’ future conversation is gaining steam as the NFL offseason officially kicks off

The Titans need a backup QB. They technically have one under contract in Will Levis. But is his future elsewhere?

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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Will Levis. Remember him? He’s been out of sight and out of mind since last summer, but it’s time to circle back on what exactly his future holds.

The Titans need a backup QB for Cam Ward, and the only other QB under contract right now is Will Levis. 2026 will be the third year of his 4-year rookie contract, and on paper he’d be a really intriguing option to simply keep as your backup. But the NFL isn’t played on paper, and the likelihood that Levis is interested in sticking around Nashville resigned to a career backup status already is practically zero. So what’s next?

The Titans have to resume looking for a Will Levis trade partner

We talked about the possibility of a Will Levis trade around the Combine last year, and then in Free Agency, and then right before the Draft, and then again in Training Camp. It was an agenda item that loomed over the Titans’ head all offseason. The possibility of a trade finally ended on July 21st, when Levis’ decision to get AC joint surgery was made public by the team. The rollout of that announcement, the curiousness of the timing, and the fact that it made him untradeable was all met with a… messy overall reaction. We don’t have to relitigate that discussion today.

We do, however, have to relitigate Levis’s trade value today. From being asked about the backup QB situation on 104.5 The Zone by Ramon & Will, to reading about Levis as a trade expectation in a Ben Solak ESPN article, this topic is officially back.

Levis is now healthy and has presumably been honing his craft behind the scenes. He spent much of the 2025 season out in California rehabbing and training, coming back and forth to Nashville a couple times to step foot into the facility. And while this was a question dominated by upside and league-wide demand for QB options last season, it’s now a question dominated by the passage of time and lack of tape.

I honestly do not know how to judge what he could be worth in a trade when no prospective buyer has seen him do anything in many months, let alone seen how he’s moving post-op. I do not know how it would work for a team hoping to at least see him practice some this spring. Could they get legal (or technically illegal) access to a private workout tape? Or even Titans OTA’s tape? This is a blind spot for me that I’m going to dig on.

If the proposition would simply be a leap of faith, it would have to be a trade facilitated by a team desperate in a pretty bad QB pool who was tapping Levis as a backup/project guy. The team that comes to mind, which Solak mentions in his ESPN article as well, is Minnesota. Head Coach Kevin O’Connell is exactly the kind of guy you’d expect to want to get his hands on a toolsy player like Levis, a QB who just needs to get his mentals right. Id’ love that fit to be honest with you, and I think it would make a lot of sense for the Vikings to want a young option behind McCarthy to push him.

Would the Titans get much at this juncture? I kind of doubt it. His value has decreased as time has passed. The barren QB landscape is what could juice his trade value theoretically, but that’s probably wishful thinking. All I know is that both the front office and coaching staff now in place are not the people who drafted Levis originally. And I feel strongly that Levis wants a fresh start. A divorce here feels inevitable.

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