Will Levis was good enough to give Kentucky a chance vs. Tennessee

Will Levis put the team on his back. It was good enough to give Kentucky a chance to beat Tennessee, in spite of a couple costly mistakes. You can see his impact in the box score and feel it on the UK sideline.

Kentucky’s quarterback completed 31-of-39 passes 372 yards and three touchdowns. He also caught a pass for 15 yards and rushed for 47 and a couple of scores. After doing the math, Levis totaled 419 yards of offense and five total touchdowns. It all happened on the heels of arguably his worst collegiate performance.

“He’s a stud,” said offensive coordinator Liam Coen. “That’s just the way he is. He’s tough as nails. It means so much to him. All day Sunday that kid was in our building watching film, watching film, watching film, trying to get better, trying to get better, trying to get better.

“Nobody puts in more time, nobody puts in more work and nobody practices like he practices, in terms of how fast he goes, how hard he goes. The speed at which he plays and practices at is how he always is, a hundred miles an hour. It’s a fine line of trying to slow him down, which I thought was fantastic tonight. We didn’t protect him. We didn’t protect him and we need to do a better job at pass pro.”

At Mississippi State Levis completed less than 50% of his passes and threw three interceptions. The quarterback responded by going back to work.

“I just took the approach of doing — when I thought I had done enough, just do a little extra,” he said. “I’m going to continue to do that for the rest of the season.”

One Big Mistake

The quarterback will take those compliments from his coordinator, but he was quick to point his mistakes. One proved to be costly, a pick six to Alontae Taylor that proved to be too much for the Wildcats to overcome.

“Despite the numbers, there’s still a lot of things that could have gone differently. That interception was a bad decision by me. They clouded the field. I can’t be throwing a quick out-breaking route like that because that corner is in that flat responsibility. I just need to do a better job seeing the big picture and moving on in that progression,” Levis said.

“I know we have a lot of things run-game wise that could have been a lot cleaner. We gotta take the positives too. We gotta look at the tape and be proud of ourselves, what we did offensively. But at the same time being as critical as possible to push ourselves to improve as much as possible.”

Levis Inspired the Defense

Kentucky’s quarterback was not perfect, but his play kept Kentucky pushing and straining regardless of the circumstance. Not only did it rally the offensive playmakers, it gave the defense hope when it was nowhere to be found.

“We tried to feed off the offense. It’s easy to get down in games like this — definitely when you’re making mistakes. You got teammates that’s pretty hard on themselves so we just tried to feed off the offense,” said senior linebacker DeAndre Square.

“I love what Will was doing out there. The whole offense really, but he put his body on the line and it made me just tell the other guys ‘look at him’. He’s putting his body on the line in each and every play and we gotta do the same. I know it came late but we got a couple of stops late. We just wanted to keep fighting.”

The defense was able to muster two much-needed second half stops. Levis gave Kentucky a chance, even when it appeared they had no business being in the game. The Wildcats’ finished short of the ultimate goal, souring an outstanding game by the Kentucky quarterback.