Will Levis was in the spotlight a lot on Thursday night. That is because the Kentucky quarterback went undrafted in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft, despite at one point becoming the odds-on favorite to be the second overall pick.
Cameras for both ESPN and NFL Network checked in on Levis and his family every time a team that could have theoretically used a quarterback decided not to take him.
It isn’t the first time we have seen this happen to a quarterback. Aaron Rodgers and Brady Quinn both legendarily waited to hear their name called considerably longer than expected on their respective draft days. On the latest episode of his podcast, Bomani Jones said it does not seem like the NFL takes any delight in that kind of drama the way it used to.
“They don’t ask you to come unless they think you’re going somewhere around the first round,” Jones said on The Right Time. “Like, they go ask around and stuff like that, but they don’t want you on camera going through all of this.”
Jones added that it wasn’t just on-site. It used to be common for ESPN to cut to prospects at home waiting to hear their names called. Now, viewers tend not to know that there is a camera in a guy’s house until the network shows him celebrating getting picked.
“One thing I’ve noticed that they don’t seem to do nearly as much in the draft is the guy that home that’s falling? No, they’re not showing him all stressed out.”
Domonique Foxworth, who joins Bomani Jones every Friday on The Right Time, didn’t quite see it the same way. He isn’t sure that the networks stopped showing guys in their homes as a matter of courtesy or good taste. It seems more practical.
“I do think if they put a camera in your house, there is an understanding. ‘Oh, we’re not gonna do you like that.’ Because somebody’s gonna knock that goddamn camera over,” Foxworth said. “In the green room? You’re fair game.”
He added that he experienced his own version of the at-home frustration in 2005. Foxworth expected to be drafted in the second or third round coming out of the University of Maryland. He ended up being taken late in the third round, which at that time would have been the very end of the first day of the event.
