Ever since the Tennessee Titans drafted Cam Ward in April, we’ve wondered what they’ll do with Will Levis. Will he stick around with a demotion to backup? Is he even the best backup on the team? Would he make it awkward? Could they try to trade him? Would they even want to trade him?

Well, he was the clear best backup on this team heading into training camp. And there was at least some mutual interest in trading him. But all of those questions were silenced in one fell swoop on Monday when the team announced he was undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery on July 29.

Will Levis is undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery on July 29th, per the Titans. This is a decision he made on the advice of additional medical opinions.

No more talk of Levis being the backup or being traded. He’s going to try to get his AC joint right for 2026.

— Easton Freeze (@eastonfreeze) July 21, 2025

This was a decision made of his own accord, after consulting second and third medical opinions on what to do for the shoulder that’s plagued him since early last season. Time and rest ultimately wasn’t doing the trick, and the Levis camp decided on their own that taking the surgery now was what’s best for the future of his career. The Titans expressed their support of his right to make this decision in their statement.

But what now? How does this impact the Titans quarterback situation, and how big an impact is it really?

The Backup Plan Barely Changes

While this Levis story is getting some serious run to start training camp week, in terms of actual football impact, it’s relatively small potatoes.

I do believe that the Titans would have rolled with Levis as their backup for Cam Ward if a trade never came to pass. He was clearly the best of the backup options currently on the team. But this coaching staff is awfully fond of Brandon Allen as well, and I don’t get the sense they’re all that worried about him being the backup now instead. He would’ve been the plan had a trade for Levis come together anyways.

Is Allen a particularly encouraging guy to have as your backup? No. Not if you’re wanting to be able to win games with them, anyways. But should you want to win games with them? I’m not actually convinced this team should.

To me, backup quarterback is often the most underrated position on good teams, and the most overrated on bad ones, for the purposes of the rebuilding Titans, they get lumped into the “bad” category until they prove otherwise. If God forbid Cam Ward were to go down, having a guy who can come in and win games does you absolutely no good for the future of this franchise. That doesn’t mean you give up on development with the rest of the team. But you don’t need meaningless wins to work on that. And if wins with Brandon Allen are required for a coaching staff to keep their jobs, then the franchise is already deeply unserious in the first place and has much bigger problems on their hands.

So the Titans will happily roll with Allen if they have to. Will they poke around on others who are/will become available this month? I’m sure they will. Maybe somebody on this list seems like a better fit for them.

Head Coach Brian Callahan has said himself that he generally prefers a developmental type of backup to a low-ceiling, veteran one. That runs counter to the notion that Brandon Allen is “his guy”, which I think is accurate. So I guess we’ll see which of those things in his head wins out. Either way, as one person inside the Titans building put it to me this week, “as Titans we should have tunnel vision on Cam”. Well said.

Titans expected to be without starters L’Jarius Sneed and Lloyd Cushenberry to begin Training Camp with injury designations

The Titans are expected to be down a pair of starters in camp