Will Levis officially benched: two reasons why Brian Callahan has to keep him there the rest of the season
The Titans set out to get an answer on Will Levis in 2024. They now have one.
It was reported Tuesday afternoon by ESPN's Jeremy Fowler that the Tennessee Titans would be making a switch at QB going forward.
A to Z's sourcing can confirm this is the case: Will Levis is being benched and Mason Rudolph will start in Week 16 and likely beyond. This was Brian Callahan's decision, and the involved parties were informed of the team's plan earlier Tuesday afternoon.
This was a decision Callahan left the door open for in his press conferences Sunday and Monday. It's one he had to make for two big reasons: doing what's best for the team, and self-preservation.
Too Deep A Hole, Too Little Time To Climb
This was the right decision for Brian Callahan and for his Titans. That carries a lot of weight coming from me, Easton Freeze, world's staunchest defender of giving Will Levis the entirety of the 2024 season no matter what.
Turns out, that last bit carries an asterisk: "no matter what"… unless you dig a hole too deep to possibly climb out of and risk losing your locker room.
It was the right call to stick with Levis as long as the Titans did. Getting a definitive answer on him was the #1 goal of this season. They weren't going to get that in September or October, especially in a new offense with a lot of new pieces. And when Will came back from his shoulder injury in November, he showed why you have to be patient with these things. He rattled off 4 decent-to-strong performances in a row. He demonstrated growth and the ability to be consistent for the first time in his career.
But in his past two outings against the Jaguars and Bengals, he fell directly off a cliff. Reality came crashing through the front door. He just couldn't keep it up. And while some would say two bad games is too small a sample size to give up on any player, the fact is that consistency was a massive part of the grading scale here. Levis had 9 games post-injury this season to show a half-season of growth and sustainability. For him to perform as badly as he has two weeks in a row, with just three games left to play, he put himself in a hole too big to climb out of in the time he had left. Nothing he could do the rest of this season would be able to change the verdict on his tenure in Tennessee. This was his last chance, and he fell short again.
Doing What's Best For The Team
But aside from Levis' verdict being handed down, what exactly is the point of starting Mason Rudolph the rest of the season? Why not just keep playing Levis, if for no other reason than to keep losing and/or help salvage whatever trade value he still has? This is a fair line of questioning, and it's one the Titans coaching staff spend the past 48 hours considering:
"Yeah, I think, I'm going to use the next two days to go through that process and make sure that, the decision we make is the best one for our football team and not really much to add to it at this point." Callahan said Monday morning. "And that's something we can visit with later in the week. So take the time here that I have to go through it all and make sure we're doing the right thing."
Well, "later in the week" came on Tuesday. Frankly, this news almost certainly broke a lot sooner than the Titans coaching staff intended it to. Leaks and agents make this kind of thing tricky sometimes.
Callahan gave us the biggest reason why he would have to make this decision before it was ultimately made: his #1 responsibility is to the entire team:
"I think there's a—the guys on the football team want to feel like we're all held to the same standard. And that's the biggest issue you face, is there's a locker room component to all these things and a team component to it. So you try to do best by all players involved and the guys getting ready to go play games on Sundays want to feel like we're going to put them in position to win. And that's ultimately where we—that's my job as a coach and our job as a coaching staff to do that."
Football players aren't dumb, they have a sharp nose for BS from coaches. When you're not being authentic or straightforward with a locker room, they know. And Brian Callahan is no longer at a point where he can say to the rest of his team with a straight face that Will Levis gives them the best chance to win right now. Not with the way that he's playing. In the same way all the other players on the roster get benched for poor performance, eventually the same standard has to apply to the QB.
"At the end of the day, if you're in position to make plays and you don't make them or we have errors that cost us games, those should all count the same, I think across the board. So those are the things that I have to look at to make sure that we're doing right by everybody involved."
The first four weeks post-injury had Levis on a trajectory to salvage the statistical profile of his season. But the nightmare performances he had in the two weeks since have tanked any chance of that. Everything on paper looks bad at this point, and there's no changing it. Levis is averaging 1.6 turnovers/gm this season, the most by a QB who played 11+ games in a season since Jameis Winston's 30/30 TD/INT 2019 season.
Levis is one of nine QBs with a negative EPA/play this season, ranking below the likes of Cooper Rush, Anthony Richardson, Gardner Minshew, and Mac Jones. Mason Rudolph is 22nd in the league in this category.
It's been too bad these past two weeks to roll him out there any longer and expect the rest of the team to remain steadfast behind Callahan and his vision. Which brings us to the second reason why Brian Callahan had to pull this plug.
Self-Preservation
Callahan himself will never say it. Heck, he probably doesn't even really think too much about it. He comes across as a genuine guy, and he continues to say he doesn't make decisions in the name of preventing his own firing. I take him at his word on that mentality, though ultimately the #1 job as an NFL head coach is to keep the job.
But while he won't say it, I will: he has to do this to try to acquit himself and his staff in these final three games. Is Callahan coaching for his job right now? Not exactly. Barring an emotional snap-judgement from Amy Adams Strunk, he should be safe to head into Year 2. But you can bet that he'll be coaching for his job as soon as Week 1, 2025 rolls around. And it will likely be that way all season long, until he eventually gets canned or makes it out the other side because they find success.
The reasonable pushback from those who disagree with the Levis benching for this reason is that Rudolph isn't any better. He's got a worse arm. He's a check-down machine. He's shown the ability to turn the football over too much as well. So what does starting him change exactly?
I'm certainly not the person who is going to sit here and try to convince you that Rudolph is anything but a backup. He isn't. He is no savior for this team or for this coaching staff, at least in terms of winning games.
But the point here is not how good Rudolph is; this is about how bad Levis is suddenly playing. Rudolph doesn't clear the bar because he's underrated, he clears the bar because the bar is on the floor.
Believe it or not, Rudolph is actually the best QB in the entire AFC South in terms of EPA/per play. That's how low the bar currently is in this dreadful division.
This is also true for Success Rate by the way, of which he currently has the 16th highest among QBs league-wide. Rudolph's process as a QB is simply better than Levis' right now. And he's at least going to get the ball into the hands of the Titans playmakers. Ridley, Spears, Pollard, NWI, Okonkwo, Whyle, Vannett, Boyd: get these guys the ball in space, which Brian Callahan's scheme is creating opportunities for, and let them make plays happen.
Now, without a QB who can himself make a big play when it's needed, you're handicapped as a team. And this is why Rudolph is not the magical cure to winning this team seeks. But he is simply less limiting than Levis is right now, and that's why Callahan & Co. need to roll with him the rest of the year.
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