Thirty-third overall, gone before Week 1
Tennessee traded up eight spots in 2023 to take Will Levis at No. 33. Today, ahead of the deadline to trim rosters to 53 players, the Titans waived him. Multiple reports carried the move within minutes of each other.
The arithmetic behind the decision is not kind. Levis started 21 games across two seasons in Nashville and won five of them. He went 3-6 as a rookie, then 2-10 in 2024 before Mason Rudolph replaced him in the lineup. Tennessee finished that season 3-14, which is how the franchise ended up holding the first overall pick the following spring.
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One night in Atlanta, then a long decline
The first impression was the best one. Week 8 of the 2023 season, first career start, 238 yards and four touchdown passes in a 28-23 win over the Falcons. Nothing across the three years that followed came close to matching it.
His 2024 line reads 2,091 yards, 13 touchdowns, 12 interceptions. A touchdown-to-interception ratio hovering around even is survivable for a young quarterback on a strong roster. Tennessee did not have one, and the Titans went 2-10 in his starts that year.
Then came the shoulder. Levis underwent surgery on his right shoulder during training camp last summer and lost all of 2025. The same joint had troubled him through the previous season, and an ankle injury cost him time as a rookie. He reported to this camp at 27 with a single full season of starting experience behind him.
Trubisky holds the backup job behind Cam Ward
The Titans signed Mitchell Trubisky to a two-year contract in the offseason and handed him most of the work behind Cam Ward through camp. Trubisky now stands as the primary backup to the No. 1 overall pick of the 2025 draft, the player the organization has built its offense around.
Levis had been entering the final year of his rookie deal. His tenure spanned several coaching and front-office changes, beginning with a mandate to succeed Ryan Tannehill and ending as a cutdown-day casualty on a team reshaped around a quarterback drafted 32 picks ahead of where he went.
He either clears waivers or he does not. Either way, the quarterback Tennessee moved up to get leaves Nashville without the job it drafted him for.
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