In addition to National Football League, NFL also is an acronym for “Not For Long.” Former Oilers coach Jerry Glanville made that line famous when caught by an NFL Films crew berating a first-year official after what he perceived to be a bad call.
The same could be said for the league’s young quarterbacks.
While the Titans try to figure out if Will Levis can measure up as a franchise quarterback and cut out the killer mistakes that are plaguing him, it’s worth noting that the time element is something that cannot be ignored.
The trend nowadays is to cast aside quarterbacks who can’t figure it out by their second or third season. After all, no team wants to make a Daniel Jones-type mistake of giving big money to a quarterback who has been middle-of-the-pack at best.
It’s a major reason why four of the five quarterbacks taken in the first round of the 2021 draft are no longer with the team that selected them. Only Trevor Lawrence is still in place with the Jaguars, and his performance so far this season has been, at best, disappointing.
In 2022, considered a weak quarterback class to begin with, five of the seven quarterbacks drafted have been traded or cut, with only Mr. Irrelevant – Brock Purdy – a true hit from that class.
So from that perspective, it would appear Levis is on borrowed time. It will all hinge on how the organization assesses his progress between now and the end of the season.
But, just as teams can put themselves in a lurch by giving big money to the wrong guy like Jones (and maybe Lawrence), there also is the perspective of giving up too soon.
While it remains to be seen if any of the 2021-22 castoffs will really develop somewhere else, the Titans were already stung by that possibility a couple of weeks ago when Malik Willis strolled into town and torched them wearing a Green Bay Packers uniform.
So it’s a tricky proposition at best. Remember when Cleveland fans Browns couldn’t wait to run Baker Mayfield out of town and usher in Deshaun Watson? Who had the last laugh there?
Mayfield is playing like a top-tier quarterback in his new home in Tampa Bay, while Watson, with all his legal problems, a suspension and injuries, looks like a shell of his former self.