Will Levis makes more preseason award watch lists

As we head down the final stretch of the preseason, more and more award watch lists are rolling out; today, Will Levis was named to a pair of them. Kentucky’s senior quarterback is now in the running for the Manning Award and the College Football Performance Awards (CFPA) National Performer of the Year Trophy. Earlier this summer, he was named to the watch lists for the Davey O’Brien, Maxwell, and Walter Camp Player of the Year Awards.  

In his first season at Kentucky after transferring from Penn State, Levis threw for 2,826 yards and 24 touchdowns, while rushing for nine more. He completed 66.0% of his passes to finish with an overall passer rating of 148.3. His 24 TD passes were the most by a Kentucky quarterback since Andre’ Woodson had 40 in 2007. He totaled 3,202 yards of total offense, the seventh player in school history to reach 3,000 yards of total offense in a season.

Levis was named to the Davey O’Brien QB Class of 2021 and the Davey O’Brien Award Great 8 List after accounting for Kentucky’s first five touchdowns in the 42-21 win over LSU. He also was a two-time FBS National Offensive Player of the Week (vs. LSU and Louisville) and a two-time College Football Performance Awards National Performer of the Week honorable mention (vs. LSU and Louisville).

Levis shines in Kentucky’s second scrimmage

Kentucky held its second and final scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday. Levis and the offense had an off-day in the team’s first scrimmage a few weeks ago, so Mark Stoops was pleased to see them rebound as the season-opener draws near.

“He really looked good today,” Stoops said. “I thought he threw some really good balls. Some really tough passes. Even the ones we missed, I felt like we were fractions off.”

“It’s good,” Levis said of the offense’s performance on Saturday. “I think as time’s been going on, we’ve been able to just keep progressing and I think today we made some big steps, a few drives with the ones that we’re pretty pleased with, a two-minute drive that went well. Anytime you can get those situations in and they work out how we want to, it’s good because we get limited reps at those types of things. It was much cleaner today than it was that day. That was one of our lower days of camp. It’s been a little up and down but we’ve progressed a lot throughout it and I’m proud of our guys.”

Sources tell KSR that Levis was one of the standouts on Saturday, making several “big boy NFL throws” and distributing the ball to all three levels of the Cats’ passing game. As for all of these watch lists, don’t bother bringing them up to him.

“I don’t care,” Levis said of the preseason hype. “It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t look at that stuff. None of that has ever mattered, so why should I care about it?”