Will Levis is still a Tennessee Titan.

That’s an innocuous fact that is easily lost at this stage in his career. After losing his starting job during a rocky 2024, being replaced by Cam Ward in 2025, and choosing to get shoulder surgery that knocked him out of this past football season, he has all-but disappeared from the picture.

I have been somebody saying and at times reporting that Levis’s future is elsewhere. For the better part of a year, I’ve been saying it’s a question of when, not if he gets moved. But a lot has changed in Tennessee since we last saw him on a practice field, and my understanding is that things have changed in terms of his standing on this team as well.

Will Levis could stick around with the Titans longer than we thought

Levis first began dealing with AC joint issues in his throwing shoulder on September 30th, 2024. He dove for a first down early in a road game against the Dolphins, and had to leave the game with a shoulder designation. Titans fans remember the up-and-down nature of his return to practice and play that season. He and the team struggled to get that timeline right.

He continued to play and train through that injury into 2025, but the issue never fully resolved. He decided to shut himself down and get surgery on the AC joint in July of 2025, just as training camp was starting up. This was a controversial decision at the time, as the timing seemed to some like a guy who didn’t want to compete for a backup job behind the rookie Ward. We’d come into the late summer expecting him to be somebody who could show out in the preseason and garner a decent return on the trade market, an upgraded version of the Malik Willis storyline the year prior.

But the surgery was completed and he went into rehab mode, as the rest of us focused on the season at hand.

That was the last time we saw him play football in any capacity. He’s since returned to throwing and is, by all accounts, ready to roll into this offseason program. OC Brian Daboll mentioned him at his rookie minicamp press conference on Saturday.

“Will has been really good for us,” Daboll explained. “He’s picked up the system well. He’s a big, strong, athletic guy who’s played some in the league. And he kind of gets a fresh start here with us.”

A fresh start is exactly the late-breaking indication I’ve gotten from a couple of sources, which is why I changed my tune on this the week before the draft. I began preaching on broadcasts that I no longer expected him to be traded over draft weekend. He wasn’t, and I now no longer think he’s going to be traded anytime soon this offseason. I think where both parties once felt a divorce would be best for everyone involved, things have now softened on that front.

His value coming off of a surgery is at least a part of this calculation. What team is trading a real draft pick or player for Levis when they haven’t seen him do anything football related in a full season’s time? I believe this team won’t move him unless an offer of legitimate value is on the table. And I don’t see how that comes any earlier than the end of the preseason in the case that he lights it up in August.

The Titans could even roll into his final year on his rookie contract with him as their backup. I think Daboll’s presence and reputation for working with QBs is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. So get ready to see Levis around for a little while longer than you may have thought.