Penn State Sports Magazine
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5 6 M A Y 2 0 2 4 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M quarterback. He and his family weren't so sure he could afford to risk even the remote possibility that he might not win the starting position. Four days after the spring game, Stevens announced that he was transferring. "We wanted it to work so bad," his fa- ther, Tom Stevens, told The Athletic. "Af- ter being as invested as Tommy was for four-plus years, it gets to the point where either you have to make that jump or it's going to be too late to make that jump. We just didn't want it to get to the point where it was too late for Tommy to have any other options." Southern Exposure Stevens' exit may have been a bomb- shell, but there was nothing surprising about his destination. His former of- fensive coordinator and position coach at Penn State, Joe Moorhead, had left in December 2017 to become head coach at Mississippi State, making Starkville a logi- cal destination. A month after announcing his departure from PSU, Stevens joined the Bulldogs' program. At Mississippi State, Stevens was named the starter in mid-August, and he was ef- fective in the Bulldogs' opener against Louisiana, completing 20 of 30 attempts for 236 yards, with 2 passing touchdowns and 1 score on the ground. Against Southern Miss the following week, he completed his first 9 attempts, the longest game-opening streak since Dak Prescott completed his first 12 passes against Arkansas in 2015. Stevens had thrown for 105 yards and 2 touchdowns when he was knocked out of the game with a shoulder injury in the second quar- ter. The 38-15 win over the Eagles turned out to be the first of four games that he was unable to finish due to injuries, and he missed three other games entirely. Stevens completed the season with 1,155 yards passing, including 11 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. The Bulldogs' inability to keep him healthy was a contributing fac- tor in a 6-7 finish that resulted in Moor- head's dismissal after just two seasons at the school. Back at Penn State, Clifford and Levis battled for the first-team job in preseason camp, with Franklin noting in August that the two "are both approaching it as if they are the starter." Clifford won the position and went on to lead the Nittany Lions to an 11-2 finish and a Cotton Bowl victory over Memphis. That season-long performance, in which he ranked fourth in the Big Ten with an average of 254.7 yards of total offense per game, established a clear hierarchy in the PSU quarterbacks room, one that left Levis feeling as though there wasn't a path to playing time except as a run-oriented QB in short-yardage situations. By February 2021, he came to believe that time was running out if he was go- ing to prove himself as a legitimate pro prospect. Rather than spend a third season play- ing behind Clifford, Levis left for Ken- tucky, where he felt he would have an op- portunity to showcase his skills against some of the nation's top defenses. "I think that if I'm able to succeed in a conference like the SEC, that only helps my case to be able to play at the next level," he told the "Behind Kentucky Football" podcast. "I want to play the best teams, and I want to beat the best teams." Professional Grade By most metrics, the three-team quar- terback shuffle worked out well for Clif- ford and Levis. They combined to start 70 games as college players and won 49 of them. Clifford left Penn State as the school's all-time leader with 10,661 pass- ing yards, while Levis threw for 5,233 yards in only two seasons at Kentucky, the sixth- highest total in program history. Moreover, both were playing in the NFL last season. Levis was chosen in the sec- ond round of the 2023 draft by Tennes- see and went on to start nine games in his rookie season, completing 58.4 percent of his attempts for 1,808 yards. He appears to be the franchise's quarterback of the future. Clifford was selected in the fifth round by Green Bay last year and spent his rookie season backing up Jordan Love. He played in two games and attempted just 1 pass, which he completed for a 37-yard gain against Minnesota. Stevens had a brief stint in the NFL. Drafted by New Orleans in the seventh round in 2020, he spent time with the Saints as well as the Carolina Panthers and New York Giants. After being waived by the Giants in August 2021, he moved on to the Canadian Football League and has been a backup quarterback with the Calgary Stampeders the past two seasons. We'll never know how history would have unfolded if Stevens had remained at Penn State in 2019. Would PSU have served as a better springboard for a pro career than Mississippi State? And what would have happened after he left? If Clifford hadn't firmly established him- self as QB1 in 2019, would the starting job have ended up in different hands in 2020? Might the strong-armed Levis have emerged as the Lions' first-team quarter- back? It's easy to conjure up counterfactual scenarios in which Levis develops into a starter-level NFL talent at Penn State rather than at Kentucky. But it's a point- less exercise. Given the freedom that the portal had afforded college football play- ers, there was probably no scenario in which the Nittany Lions would have been able to hold together a quarterback depth chart consisting of three future pros. ■ Sean Clifford won the starting quarterback job as a redshirt sophomore in 2019 and helped guide the Lions to an 11-2 record and a Cotton Bowl victory. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL