Tennessee quarterback Will Levis has completed exactly two-thirds of his passes and thrown for 548 yards with five touchdown passes and two interceptions since returning from injury.

-- Photo By Ashley Landis | Ap

There are still many things to work on before Will Levis becomes a finished product as an NFL quarterback.

But after a rocky start to the season and a shoulder injury that cost him three games, Levis looks like he is beginning to blossom. On Sunday, he stacked his third strong game in a row at quarterback and, more importantly, he showed enough moxie to overcome a critical mistake – an interception for a touchdown – while rallying the Titans to an improbable win against AFC South leader Houston on the road.

It’s one thing for Levis to show promise with good numbers when the Titans are still absorbing double-digit losses. But to take a step with his play and lead a very downtrodden team to a road win inside the division is growth.

Yes, he still holds the ball too long and takes too many sacks. Yes, he still has to improve his pocket awareness at times and simply throw the football away to avoid sacks. But yes, for three games in a row now, Levis has had performances that suggest, contrary to the early-season struggles, maybe the Titans won’t be looking for another starting quarterback again in 2025.

On Sunday, he went head-to-head against C.J. Stroud, last season’s Rookie of the Year, and won the battle, outperforming the quarterback who was the No. 2 overall pick in Levis’ draft class and has already shown most of the signs required of a franchise quarterback.

Levis still has much to improve upon in his game, as the critical interception by Jimmie Ward showed Sunday. But the successes are starting to balance out the mistakes, and you can see that Coach Brian Callahan is encouraged by what his young quarterback is beginning to show.

“It’s an accumulation of the last couple weeks,” Callahan said afterward. “I thought he played, for the most part, fantastic, particularly in that first half. He had the one interception for a touchdown, but he kept battling.

“But I really was happy with the way he played. He did some really nice things, and he protected the ball well outside the interception. So that’s what quarterbacking looks like. I think he was pretty efficient.”

Further evidence of growth from Levis was the interception. Earlier in the season, critical mistakes were fatal for the Titans and Levis’ demeanor. But Sunday, he was able to shrug it off and come back and make another play to win the game.

“I don’t know what the final stats were, but pretty dang efficient and threw for a bunch of yards and managed the offense, and at the end of the day got us in position to score points and we scored more than they did for the first time in a while,” Callahan says. “So (I’m) really proud of Will. Proud of all the things that he’s done to try to get himself back in the right place mentally, physically, all those things and it was a really good performance.”

Moving on from mistakes

For his part, Levis said he just put the mistake behind him and worked to get another opportunity to score. That came when he found Chig Okonkwo on about a 15-yard route down the seam. The tight end did the rest, finishing a 70-yard pass play that the Titans defense made stand up for the win.

“Just put it behind me. Just get the ball back and can’t really think about it. Didn’t make any necessarily huge plays myself after that, but I just put the ball in play and made the right decisions and let our guys finish out that game. Just proud of how everyone finished,” Levis says.

And that is really all Callahan would want from Levis. Make the right moves and give his guys a chance to help him make plays.

Since returning from the shoulder injury, Levis’ numbers reflect his improvement. He has completed exactly two-thirds of his passes (56 of 84) and thrown for 548 yards with five touchdown passes and two interceptions. That computes to a 104.6 passer rating and an average yards per attempt of 8.9 yards.

Levis obviously is not at the point where he elevates the team around him necessarily, but the numbers above translate to a level of football the Titans can win with.

Sure, it was easy to write Levis off after the first few games of the season when the results clearly were not there. But the light goes on at different times for different guys. Stroud had it come early for him. Guys like Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold are playing their best football now six or seven years in.

And last year in Green Bay, the first half of Jordan Love’s first season as a starter had Packers fans wondering if he was the right guy. But suddenly in the second half of the year, things clicked for Love and he has solidified himself as the Packers QB of the present and the future.

So with six games left in the Titans season, it’s too early to declare that Levis is the answer. But with the recent returns of the last three weeks, it’s certainly too early to say he’s not.