Never let anyone tell you to be yourself. You never know what people will find weird about your “personality”. I ate peanut butter and cheese tacos growing up, but I would never pass it on if I was projected as a first-round pick in the NFL. According to experts, Mel Kiper and some redditorspecifically: Will Levis would likely be the second quarterback selected in the 2023 NFL Draft, and the only possible reason for him to drop to day two was his love for mayonnaise in his coffee.
General managers will criticize prospects for anything, including their performance on made-up standardized tests. Inconsistency, inaccuracy, sight testing and college success aside, I blame the Hellmans-Folgers Mochaccinos for multiple teams needing a quarterback to pass the Kentucky product. It has to be that, right?
When given the choice between Anthony Richardson and Levis, two guys with physical attributes that make Todd McShay blush, there has to be a tiebreaker. It could have been Richardson’s somersault on pro day in Florida that won Indy’s favor, or it could have been the spoonful of aioli they saw Levis drop into his cold beer.
Do I have a condiment overuse phobia brought on by people drowning their Italian BMTs in mayonnaise during my time at Subway? One hundred percent, and there’s no way I’m going to select Levis based on that fact alone, but I’m also not trying to maintain a seven-figure gig that’s constantly sabotaged by bad quarterback play.
The real reason Levis fell
We were subject to the sad Levis family for the last half of the first round because a lot more organizations look at the quarterback than you might think, even though we probably don’t have an actual franchise guy. They passed Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Green Bay, Tennessee and Washington.
None of Jordan Love, Desmond Ridder, Sam Howell, Ryan Tannehill or Baker Mayfield inspire confidence in their corresponding fan bases. I also think that once the draft goes shaky, and with all the trading on Thursday night, it was shaky, HQ and war rooms panic that their game plan is flipped.
I don’t care if Las Vegas and New Orleans signed Jimmy Garoppolo or David Carr as starters. NFL teams don’t part with quarterbacks they think are solid starters, and a quality potential QB1/backup with a big lead for good value is worth trumping other needs in a round. I’ve trashed Levis pretty much throughout the draft process, and probably before then, but even I thought the amount of adoration he got would make him a first-round pick.
Are NFL General Managers Evolving? Has the quarterback’s success rate made them timid? Did social media break the groupthink that made guys like Mitch Trubisky and Mayfield a top pick or two in the draft?
Yeah, I don’t think so either. It’s an anomaly that Levis made it past the first round at Union Station. And he definitely has nothing to do with Miracle Whip lattes.
