Will Levis' Slide Out of Round 1 Leaves Twitter in Disbelief amid 2023 NFL Draft

There's always one.

Every year at the NFL draft, without fail, there's at least one prospect who has to endure a surprising slide down the board, with television coverage routinely showing the anguish—or the pained attempts to hide that anguish—on the face of said player.

This year, it was Kentucky quarterback Will Levis, who was projected to be a potential top-10 pick but fell out of the first round altogether.

And NFL Twitter was pretty shocked by that development.

One thing that may have precipitated a drop was a toe injury from this past season:

But it's also possible that much of the pre-draft hype for Levis may have been smoke screens, teams trying to hide their true targets and his agent hyping up his upside, hoping to drum up more interest in his client to get him a better draft position.

A slide out of the top 10 was surprising, but it wasn't earth-shattering. But dropping out of the first round entirely had most draft pundits pretty surprised, especially after Bryce Young went No. 1 overall to the Carolina Panthers, C.J. Stroud went No. 2 to the Houston Texans and Anthony Richardson went No. 4 to the Indianapolis Colts.

NFL Network's Daniel Jeremiah considered Levis the No. 14 overall player in this draft, writing that he was an "inconsistent player on tape, but he possesses ideal size, arm strength and athleticism" while adding that "Levis is gifted, but has some bad habits he needs to clean up in order to be a reliable NFL starter."

Clearly, NFL teams were worried enough about that inconsistency and those bad habits to avoid him in the first round. It's hard to imagine he'll be on the board for long on Friday, however.