Will Levis’ first word was “ball.”

His nickname as a boy was Bamm-Bamm, after the super-strong, club-wielding fictional character from “Flintstones” cartoons.

“Everything he did was full throttle,” his mother, Beth, recently told The Post. “He was the classic kid who skipped crawling and walking and went straight to running and jumping and climbing. He always had a froth of sweat on his forehead.”

Levis’ bedroom growing up, first in North Attleborough, Mass., in the shadow of Gillette Stadium, and then in Madison, Conn., featured what his father, Mike, said was a “definite idolization of Tom Brady.”

It also included the occasional science or Lego project along with a giant 8-foot-by-10-foot sign from Under Armour’s “I Will” campaign. “He would wake up to that every day,” Beth says.

From those determined beginnings, Levis’ interest in dissecting a problem, or running through one, has led him toward the top of this year’s NFL Draft, where he is expected to be one of the first quarterbacks taken.

At the Scouting Combine, the 6-foot-3, 230-pound 23-year-old, who spent his first three years of college at Penn State and his past two at Kentucky, dazzled with his physical skills, hitting a 59-mph average on his throws (third-highest among QBs at the Combine since 2016). And while some reports noted a few teams were taken aback at the confidence he expressed in himself during interviews, NFL.com draft expert Daniel Jeremiah noted that personnel evaluators who have been through Kentucky have been impressed with how much information he could process.

In two seasons in Lexington, he tallied 5,232 yards on 66 percent passing with 43 touchdowns. In his first season there, he added 376 yards rushing and nine rushing scores.

The 23-year-old comes from a family of college athletes.

Levis’ great-grandfather, Alva Kelley, was an All-American at Cornell, and helped the Big Red to a football national championship in 1939. His late grandfather, David Kelley, who lived his final years a couple of football fields away from the Levis’ home and would instill leadership lessons to his grandson with John Wooden books, lettered in football, lacrosse and wrestling at UMass before going on to be assistant coach under the legendary Carm Cozza at Yale. Beth played soccer at Yale, and Mike played football at Denison University in Ohio.

Will, the youngest of the four Levis kids and the only boy, seemed destined for football from an early age.

“Any kind of ball, he gravitated toward,” Beth said. “The first sport he played was soccer. He played it like it was football — he would literally tackle kids. So you could see football was in his future the way he played soccer.”

Success often isn’t linear, though, and it wasn’t for Levis, who has married his athletic gifts with patience and a willingness to work. And soon, it could make him the first quarterback from the Nutmeg State to go in the first round since Hall of Famer Steve Young in 1984.

Levis got his first taste of quarterback in a wildcat role playing youth football. He was hooked.

At Xavier High in Middletown, Conn., an all-boys school about 20 miles north of the family’s home on the shoreline, Levis eventually beat out upperclassman and future Michigan tight end Luke Schoonmaker for the starting job, a position he held for his final three years, being named a captain as a senior.

Levis, a three-star recruit, arrived at Penn State in 2018.

In Happy Valley, the progression continued to take time. Levis found himself stuck behind Trace McSorely and Sean Clifford. After his first year, coaches told Levis he had the talent and mindset to be a first-round QB, he just needed two years of experience on the field. But when he couldn’t break through the logjam on the depth chart after three years, he transferred to Kentucky. As a junior there, his offensive coordinator was Sean McVay disciple Liam Coen, and last year it was Kyle Shanahan disciple Rich Scangarello.

At Kentucky, Levis began to shine, including leading the Wildcats to a 2022 Citrus Bowl upset victory over Iowa.

Still, there have been questions — notably, Levis threw 10 interceptions and was sacked 36 times last season. But some of that can be attributed to a shaky offensive line and the depletion of skill position talent around him, resulting in Levis at times forcing the issue.

Mention Levis to draftniks and names such as Josh Allen and Matthew Stafford are mentioned as potential models for what he could become. But there’s also a lot of variance in those projections. Some scouts feel Levis “is very boom or bust,” in the words of ESPN’s draft analyst Matt Miller, and needs “to improve his decision-making.”

Whatever doubts exist certainly haven’t dampened Levis’ belief in himself.

“I’ve got a cannon, and I want to show it off,” Levis said at the NFL Scouting Combine. “I think I’ve got one of the stronger arms that’s come out of any draft class in recent memory.”

He didn’t stop there.

“My goal is to win more than anybody,” he said. “I want to be the greatest of all time. I feel like you are crazy if you don’t think that way.”

More crazy would be drinking coffee with mayonnaise and eating bananas with the peel still on them, habits that garnered Levis a bit of internet notoriety. But behind the goofy stunts, those who know him best say he is someone who is tough, driven and intelligent while possessing an NFL skillset.

“His release is so quick; strength has a lot to do with that,” Levis’ former personal quarterback coach Travis Meyer, who has worked with Jordan Reed and Tyler Van Dyke, among others, told The Post. “Mechanically, he’s got good feet in the pocket. He’s really sound. There’s nothing with his mechanics that’s flawed or off.

“He wasn’t a superstar [in high school], but he was doing everything he was taught and doing it well. Then he became dynamic, too.

“I’m not gonna say that I never thought he’d be this good, but you never know with kids. He is that good, and he’s genuinely what you see. He can talk, he’s personable, he’s a really nice guy who’s thoughtful and thankful.

“All of that will bring him to the next level in the NFL.”

But to whom remains a mystery, though the Colts could be one interested party after reportedly sending a sizable front office contingent to work out Levis in Lexington. The Titans and Buccaneers reportedly were also planning to have him in for a closer look.

Adds Beth Levis: “He has a pure zeal for competition. I think the game will never get old for him because of the cerebral nature of the quarterback position. It’s a layer on top of him being a competitor.”

So much so that Levis also started playing golf the last few years — his Penn State graduation present (for earning a business degree in three years) was a new set of clubs. He has the bug for that, too.

But the characterization that perhaps best sums up Levis best, from the boy watching all those Boston teams win championships, to chasing his own dreams, is one from his childhood days around the neighborhood.

“He would go hard from the time he woke up until the time he went to sleep,” Beth Levis said.