The Titans & The Deep Ball

Have the Titans really taken away Will Levis's best trait? Or was him being successful throwing deep actually a mirage? Zach Lyons takes you on a massive deep dive on deep throws.

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It’s been a while! I hope everyone has been enjoying the content that JT, Tre, and Stoney have been putting out through the week. I also hope everyone is tuning into 104.5 the Zone every week from 1p-3p CST! It’s been a blast.

Sometimes stats are hard to convey over the airwaves, especially with anyone else in the room, because data naturally invites questions and debate, and I love that, but then time slips away, and you never really got around to the meat of the matter. Gotta get those advertisers dollars.

So, something that has been bugging me lately, and we did talk about some this week, is this romanticizing of Will Levis and the deep ball. There seems to be a lot of issues or misnomers about what has happened to all the “wow” throws. I could just say: “What do you mean? Anytime he makes a dumb play, I go WOW, what an idiot”, but that doesn’t accomplish much…even if it is true.

So, I went back and watched the deep shots from last year and this year and it matched what I saw in the data…I think the public at-large is doing a few things:

• Overemphasizing the premise: cannon arm = great at deep balls.

• Romanticizing the idea that Will Levis was awesome at deep balls.

• Undervaluing the role defenses play.

• Conveniently forgetting we all knew/said he would regress to the mean in this area.

So, today, I am going to bounce around, share some stats and talk about what I think the real issue is, some of it is public perception, and how to fix it going forward.

Will Levis in College