NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Will Levis was that kid, the best athlete out there, the soccer player who was so physical they called him “Bam Bam,” the wrestler who once lifted his opponent over his head to end a match, the baseball player who made great plays at shortstop or center field and sprayed line drives all over the field.
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He wasn’t just the best, he wanted to win the most. If he didn’t, he was also that kid. The one who wanted to lose the least.
“I was a pain in the ass growing up,” Levis told The Athletic. “I was the kid who was always like throwing my bat in the dugout after striking out in little league.”
And that’s when grandfather Dave Kelley would spring into action. A study of Levis, of a born football player, of the transformation of a lightly regarded high school prospect into an NFL player — into the Tennessee Titans’ latest attempt at a homegrown franchise quarterback — can’t be done without Kelley.
He was the son of Alva Kelley, who was an end on the 1939 Cornell team that won at Ohio State, crushed Penn State 47-0 and claimed a national championship. He was the descendant of Pittsburgh steelworkers. He was a great athlete, the last three-sport varsity letter winner at the University of Massachusetts.
And like Alva, whose head coaching stints included Brown, Colgate and Hobart College, Dave Kelley made a life in football. The last quarter century of that career was spent at Yale, coaching defense under College Football Hall of Famer Carm Cozza.
Kelley was as hard-boiled as his bio would suggest. He was a brutally frank motivator with an understanding side and a feel for connecting and relating. He was a voracious reader who absorbed lessons from John Wooden, the Dalai Lama and many others.
He had the right disposition to coach, to parent. And to guide a grandson whose intensity was apparent from the first pee wee soccer slide tackle through the last NFL Scouting Combine interview.
“He was a true, no-BS type of dude, intimidating dude,” Levis said of Kelley, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 76. “Even as a little kid, as his grandchild, I always wanted to make sure I brought out my best stuff whenever I was in front of him. Make him proud. He instilled a lot of the values I feel like I live by these days. He was a true, intense, alpha male. At the same time, very loving and caring.”
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Both sides would activate when, say, a bat crashed into a dugout fence.
“He was the dude who would always discipline me a little bit after those things,” Levis said. “At the end of those conversations, after being stern, he’d have that loving attitude at the end of the day, just to know he’s got my best interest in mind and all the love in the world for me. But he was just trying to make me the best person I could be. ‘No whining, no complaining.’ That always came out of his mouth.”
Whines and complaints have not come out of Levis’ mouth during a draft process that culminated with cameras trained on him and his family in Kansas City as he went unchosen in the first round. He brushed that off, just as with the negativity that often swirled around him amid the draftnik scrutiny.
But when the Titans moved up to take him at No. 33 in the second round, emotions tumbled out of him. And the Levises thought first of Dave Kelley.
“He instilled a lot of the values I feel like I live by,” Will Levis said of his grandfather, Dave Kelley. (Courtesy of Yale Athletics)‘Be strong and do not give up’
Chicago was a fertile recruiting ground for Kelley, and for much of his time at Yale he would stay with the Skoronski family during his visits to the city. Bob Skoronski Jr., son of the late, legendary Packers lineman who won five NFL championships under Vince Lombardi, played defensive tackle at Yale for Kelley in the 1970s. When Kelley retired in 1996, it was Skoronski who put together a party for him in Chicago.
And when the Skoronskis and Levises independently chose the same agent to navigate the NFL world, the families reconnected. Beth Levis, Will’s mother and Kelley’s daughter, has known Bob Skoronski Jr., since she was a child, still years away from starring as an All-America Yale soccer midfielder. The Titans took Peter Skoronski, a Northwestern lineman and the son of Bob Jr., with the No. 11 pick in the first round. The families will be tied tightly together again as Peter and Will embark on NFL careers in Nashville.
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“If there was one person on Earth who would have loved to see Will reach his dream, it would have been my dad,” Beth Levis said. “But I do believe he’s up there and had something to do with this. Making sure Will gets his protection.”
Will Levis shares a moment with Dave Kelley at Penn State. (via Twitter)Beth and Mike Levis, who played tight end at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, met in Boston in the early 1990s. Both early out of college, they worked at a firm selling 1-800 numbers to various businesses. They eventually married and got into sports apparel sales — Beth has since started her own company in that industry — and moved to Madison, Conn., where Kelley had the foresight years earlier to purchase land and get into home building as a second career.
He built houses for his two children and their families — son David played football at Yale — right next to the one he shared with his wife, Barbara. This made for family dinners as major events and close connections between the grandparents and their grandchildren. It also put Levis in the frequent presence of many of his grandfather’s former players, highly successful people across various industries who stayed close with Kelley long after college.
“As Will got a little older and was around some of these people, I think he was able to let some of that stuff wash over him, take it all in,” Mike Levis said. “Being around achievers, being around excellence. So it wasn’t just his grandfather who was a big influence, it was the people his grandfather mentored. In some really cool aspirational, inspirational way, I think that has something to do with this whole thing.”
Levis, the oldest of Beth and Mike’s four kids, had big followings at his games from a young age. At one of them, in seventh grade, he threw an interception for a touchdown to lose a game.
A grandparent of one of the kids on the other team approached the family after the game. His name was Steve Sullivan, an author and a former quarterback at T.C. Williams High in Alexandria, Va. He wrote a book called “Remember This Titan” about Bill Yoast, who assisted Herman Boone in coaching an integrated championship team at the school in 1971, the inspiration for the movie “Remember The Titans.”
“I want you to know, your son can be an All-American,” Beth recalled Sullivan telling the family, and though that may not have quelled Levis’ dejection at the time, he worked toward the outcome.
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A starter at Xavier High for coach Andy Guyon from sophomore year on, Levis appeared destined to join the family’s Ivy League athletics lineage. He had the grades, a perfect 4.0, and he was thinking Harvard or Princeton. That was his football profile as well. But his game and his frame, now a chiseled 6-4 and 229 pounds, kept developing, and in the summer of 2017 the Power 5 offers started coming for the three-star class of 2018 recruit.
When Penn State’s James Franklin delivered one, shortly after Justin Fields dropped his commitment to Penn State, Levis’ recruitment was quickly finished. Kelley got to enjoy that, along with his grandson’s legendary senior season at Xavier.
Kelley gave Levis a Dalai Lama scroll entering high school that was titled, “Never Give Up,” and when Levis graduated, he gave him a rock that read: “Never Never Never Give Up.”
So in the summer before his freshman fall at Penn State, Levis was cleared by his parents to get a tattoo and chose the Biblical verse, 2nd Chronicles 15:7. As he describes the message: “Be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.”
A fired-up Levis hoists the Governor’s Cup trophy after Kentucky defeated Louisville last season. (Jordan Prather / USA Today)It was a nod to Kelley, and also a reflection of what he was going through. Alzheimer’s disease had started to affect him. The symptoms had been building for about a year.
“Just an awful, thieving disease,” Beth Levis said. “My dad would try to fool us, he was really smart. There would be enough of him there that we would still be able to think at times that he was OK. And he really wasn’t.”
Levis got the tattoo on July 20, 2018. His grandfather passed away on July 20, 2020. That capped a terrible few months, Kelley increasingly unable to communicate with family members, though he was able to stay home with Barbara for the duration of his life.
“At least he saw me take that step in the journey,” said Levis, whose big steps since then have been accompanied by increased attention. Such is reality for the aspiring NFL quarterback, the most important job in American sports.
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For example, Levis took some criticism for leaving Kansas City after the first night of the draft rather than staying around for the second day. But he had a massive gathering of family and friends, with people from all over the country, to get back to in Madison. They included several of Kelley’s players, one of whom gave him side-by-side framed photos as a gift. In one, Kelley is stretching out to block a punt for UMass. In the other, Levis is leaping forward with the football in his hand for Kentucky.
“Both diving,” Levis said. “Same pose.”
The Levises celebrated together in 2017 when Will signed with Penn State. (Courtesy of the Levis family)‘He wants it so bad’
Levis graduated magna cum laude in three years with a finance degree from Penn State. He had a 3.97 grade point average. He expedited the process — loading up with semesters of 21 and 18 credits — in part because he could see that it would be difficult for him to surpass incumbent starting quarterback Sean Clifford.
He earned himself another opportunity at Kentucky, while laying the groundwork for a possible career after football, with extraordinary effort. When The Athletic’s Penn State writer, Audrey Snyder, reached out to Levis to see if he would do an interview on his time with the Nittany Lions, he obliged. This was uncommon. So was his avoidance of throwing shade at his former coaches in the discussion, even though when he was on the field they essentially deployed him as a running back who could occasionally throw.
A reader in the story’s comments section wrote of Levis: “He will be a great linebacker.”
Instead, his talent and presence dominated. Kentucky coaches started him with the third team. His teammates begged coaches to elevate him to first team. Then they voted him a captain. His coaches wondered aloud if he could be cloned because they had not seen consistent, ferocious attacking of the mundane like this.
“It’s every meeting,” said Liam Coen, Kentucky’s offensive coordinator for that 2021 season. “It’s every walk-through. It’s every jog-through. It’s every practice. It’s all game-like for him. There’s no taking it easy, it’s full tilt. You never have to ask Will for more. You never will. You know how rare that is? Very rare.”
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Said New York Giants receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, a star on that 2021 Kentucky team, to 670-AM in Chicago of Levis’ intensity: “That’s just Will. Once you get to know him, you realize he’s a really caring dude. Nothing that he says ever comes from a bad place. At the end of the day, he just wants to be the best. I loved playing with him. Loved having him as my quarterback.”
Levis’ personality didn’t change from Penn State to Kentucky. More than anything Kelley or anyone else instilled in him, he was hardwired to be intense. He was that kid throwing the bat after the strikeout, except now he had an opportunity renewed and was seizing it. It didn’t hurt that he had a much smaller class load as he pursued his master’s degree in finance and could devote more time to his preferred career path.
He also was exploring his name, image and likeness (NIL) earning potential, and a couple of social media videos of him eating a banana with a peel and putting mayonnaise in coffee went viral. They spoke to a fun, goofy side of Levis that those close to him say has always been there to balance him. To some in the wild, judgmental world of social media, they conveyed a cocky seeker of attention.
Quint Tatro didn’t get that sense when Levis first came to his house for dinner. Tatro is an investment adviser and Kentucky finance professor who invited Levis onto his podcast, “DIY Money,” in July of 2021 to talk about the burgeoning world of NIL. He invited Levis afterward to dine with his wife and kids, and they became his first Lexington friends outside of the football team.
Everyone but the Tatros’ youngest son, Aaron, then 10 years old. Aaron has Fragile X Syndrome, a genetic disorder that gives him extreme anxiety about strangers. The Tatros have had a hard time getting him to be comfortable with anyone but close family. Levis kept working on him, visit after visit, until he had a new friend.
“He just wouldn’t give up,” Tatro said of Levis, whose breakthrough led to an epic Lego session.
“After having dinner at their place four times and him not wanting to even come downstairs, and then that fifth time finally being comfortable with being in the same area as me, to now every time he sees me he takes every opportunity he can to spend time with me — just talking or sitting on the ground playing Legos — that’s what warms my heart,” Levis said. “It makes me realize how important it is to connect with people and open myself up to others that I wouldn’t typically surround myself with.”
Levis’ persistence led to a new friendship with Aaron Tatro, 10. (Courtesy of the Tatro family)And that is a Dave Kelley lesson from way back, for his children and grandchildren. Levis went on a mission trip to Guatemala in high school and got involved in a number of charitable causes at Penn State and Kentucky, though as Tatro said: “He’s not gonna put that stuff on Instagram or tweet about it, because that’s Will. If people knew half the stuff he does, quietly, they’d have no question about who he is or what he’s going to do with his platform in the future.”
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“It’s part of our responsibility to lift up and support the people around us,” Levis said, “regardless of what our platforms are and what we feel our overall impact could be.”
His could be large, especially if he’s the quarterback the Titans hope they drafted. Levis was discussed as the top pick in the draft after his 2021 season at Kentucky. He endured injuries and the loss of Coen, Robinson and key offensive linemen in 2022, and his performances in some games left questions.
He should have his rookie season to learn behind starter Ryan Tannehill before taking over in 2024, though calls for Levis won’t take long to ring through Nissan Stadium if the Titans aren’t winning early and often in 2023. And second-year quarterback Malik Willis still has designs on a future with the Titans.
However it goes, people will know how Levis feels about it. The intensity that got him here can make opponents bristle and opposing fans tweet angrily, but it’s usually well-received at home. And by potential employers.
Still, there were some reports during the draft process of Levis turning some teams off in interviews. ESPN’s Matt Hasselbeck presumed misinformation from teams interested in him.
“But you could tell he wanted it, and maybe that was a knock a little bit,” Hasselbeck said. “He wants it so bad. He wants it so bad that maybe that turned some people off.”
Those people didn’t see all that Hasselbeck saw from Levis during the NFL Scouting Combine week in Indianapolis. Hasselbeck was there to mentor several quarterback and receiver prospects that week through the NFL Legends Community — “I was a therapy dog, so to speak,” he said — and Levis was in his group.
Hasselbeck left that week a fan and believer in what Levis can bring intangibly to a team. On the final day of workouts, the receivers in the group had bench press scheduled at 6:30 a.m. in an empty Lucas Oil Stadium. Levis rallied the rest of the bleary-eyed group to pound tables and scream for each guy lifting.
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“To me, stuff like that matters,” said Hasselbeck, a former NFL quarterback with the Packers, Seahawks, Titans and Colts. “I’ve played with a lot of guys who are talented, played with a lot of first-round pick quarterbacks. I don’t know how you measure this, but it matters. It’s the kind of stuff that wins in the locker room. The kind of stuff that is valued, unselfishness, not about me, cheering you on. Bringing energy.”
Time will tell if Levis can pair that with tangible excellence at quarterback in the NFL. But the social media-driven knocks on him don’t appear to pair with reality. “Entitled,” a dirty word in sports, was thrown his way a few times leading up to the draft. Other than the fact that he was raised by successful people, the evidence and accounts say he isn’t that guy.
A hard-boiled, brutally frank motivator with a feel for connecting and relating helped see to that. Now another one awaits.
“It’s really amazing how this has all come full circle,” Beth Levis said. “Mike Vrabel as Will’s coach? Old school, no-nonsense? That’s perfect.”
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