The Pecan Park Eagle

Case Keenum, 2011, in his record-shattering year at UH.

While some Texans football fans still wait to see if rookie QB Case Keenum can actually win a game for a demoralized team in the last three games against the probably best NFL team, the Denver Broncos, and two other pretty good ones, the Indianapolis Colts and the Tennessee Titans, I remain one of those who still believes that the young man from UH will get there as a winning starter in the league. The guy just eats lessons and adapts his game better than most I’ve ever seen, for whatever that’s worth.  And it may not be much. I still consider myself first as a baseball fan who watches football in the off-season because there’s nothing else to do, but, given the time, I have this habit of getting into the details of what the diversion game is about and the details of predicting success and failure.

What I’m going by here are Case Keenum’s past and the circumstances of his current trial. Let’s look at the latter aspect first.

The absence of a superior running game, effective pass blocking, the presence of # 8, with his helmet on his head, simply pouting on the sidelines and waiting for his chance to go back in at QB have been big. Throw in the the disastrous losing streak he inherited, poor play in the defensive secondary, undisciplined dumb play and all the penalties that spring from it, an unreliable kicking game – and the QB is almost set up to take the rap for the mistakes of so many others. Throw in the dour inflexible conservatism of our likeable, but media-beleaguered head coach and … well … taking over at QB for the 2013 Texans has been about as easy as planning a book club meeting at a house that’s already on fire. Had Keenum been able to either start the season or take over earlier, for better or worse, as the starter – with no threat of replacement after a bad series, thing could have gone so much better. This is a kid who did some pretty great statement playing with a weighed down chance. – Remember the five great TD catches by Andre Johnson? They came served up by a guy who could have quit last year when he set all those records at UH and didn’t even get drafted. He also could have quit after one year on practice squad and little focus on his own preparation for ever starting.

Case Keenum didn’t quit. He has no “quit” in him. And someday, in spite of the putdowns of his abilities by some of our full-of-themselves electronic and print media egos, some NFL team is going to reap the benefits of his full bloom. We may be looking at the second coming of Drew Brees in Case Keenum.

Now, as for all those collegiate records, do you know what he did? His passing records are mostly held by a statistical landslide. And these are not the distances that come only from a “systems” accomplishment. As an individual player, Case Keenum had three influential head coaches in college: Art Briles, the coach who recruited him went on to do the great things he is continuing to do at Baylor – and that includes taking UH recruit Robert Griffin III with him to Baylor when he left for the Waco job. It was a move that set RGIII on the road to his 2011 Heisman Trophy award. Then came Kevin Sumlin to UH and he and Keenum took the Cougars to its biggest winning season in history in 2011. Then Sumlin left for Texas A&M where, in 2012, he became the 2nd former UH coach in two consecutive years to be responsible for Heisman Trophy winners when Johnny Manzeil won it for himself and the Aggies. Tony Levine became Keenum’s third college coach for one victorious bowl game victory over Penn State at the end of the 2011 season.

Then Case Keenum went to the pre-draft performance trials in the spring of 2012, where he pulled a hamstring, but kept on trying anyway. His timing was apparently slowed enough to cost him a place in the 2012 draft by clubs who were either unaware of his injury or were otherwise simply dismissive that it made any difference in the evaluation of his true potential. Gary Kubiak was not among the totally dismissive group. He signed Keenum for the Texans after the draft and he is the reason that Keenum even has this late season  chance to launch his career in Houston.

Now, let’s look at that college ball data. Here are Case Keenum’s monstrous collegiate passing records:

1) Most pass completions, career

– Case Keenum, 1,546

2) Most passing yards, career

– Case Keenum, 19,217

3) Most games, 300 or more passing yards, season –

14, Paul Smith, Tulsa, 1907

14, Case Keenum, Houston, 2011

Case Keenum #7
Starting Quarterback
Houston Texans

Most of us from UH have been waiting for this day from the moment that the Houston Texans signed Case Keenum to their taxi squad as a non-drafted free agent after the 2011 season. We knew from his career in college that, if he ever got his chance, he would shoot past Yates and Schaub into the driver’s seat as the Texans’ best leadership shot at climbing out of their “good enough to fail” malaise and start making the real move on the Super Bowl.

The modest, always humble but trenchant student of the game did just what we thought he would do. After almost disappearing from print last year, Case went to work learning the Texan system as a member of the practice squad, finally getting some critical game time in the 2013 pre-season. He quickly proved himself too valuable to be left off the active players’ roster at the start of the season. The Texans knew that he had shown enough to have been gobbled up fast by some other quarterback-desperate NFL club had they not protected him.

Then came the four-game stretch of Schaub “six-picks” and a fifth game extension of this offensive black plague by Yates for another loss and the Keenum ascension into the “starter tryout seat” as the QB to go up against Kansas City and one of the best defenses in the NFL set the stage for long-term change. Case acquitted himself beautifully, even though the Texan inability to protect Keenum from the blitz and conservative play-calling contributed greatly to Houston’s one-point loss. Case had shown what he could do, winning his promotion to the starter’s job for the balance of this fading away season. Schaub has no future here – and Yates appears to be little more than a younger version of Schaub. The Texans need to be convinced that Keenum is their guy for the future before the next draft and the only way to do that is to play him out there as the starting QB for the rest of the season.

A comparison of the college career numbers for Case Keenum and Andrew Luck is quite interesting on many levels. Take a look at the following chart. Please note the staggering difference that exists in their cumulative numbers. Only some of that chasm of difference is due to the fact that Case played four plus seasons from 2007 to 2011 due to an early season injury in 2010 that allowed him to return for his banner year in 2011. Luck, on the other hand, only played three seasons in a much less pass oriented offense at Stanford (2009-11) before coming out early as a Heisman candidate on his way to becoming the No. 1 pick in the same NFL draft that avoided Keenum altogether.

A Brief Comparison of the Collegiate Football Statistics of Case Keenum and Andrew Luck:

Case had the best answer to an oft-thought, if not always asked question from Channel 13’s Bob Slovak yesterday. Slovak wanted to know how Case felt about going up against the No. 1 Draft pick in today’s Cots@Texans game as the guy with all the new college passing records that no NFL team claimed in any round.

“When all is said and done,” Keenum answered in slow deliberate words: “This league is not about past awards or records. It’s about football. It’s not about the draft and all the externals that come with it,” Keenum added. “When the whistle blows, and that ball snaps, it’s about football.”

Case Keenum is not about ego, or keeping track of records, or getting his feelings hurt. He’s about playing the game with all his heart, mind, soul, and intelligence; he’s about learning from his mistakes and getting better; and he’s about knowing that the learning process never stops and that nothing worthwhile in life is ever possible without effort and a willingness to take nothing for granted.

Case Keenum could fail in his new opportunity with the Texans, but I, for one, wouldn’t bet against him. By season’s end, unless he gets hurt, God forbid, my guess is that the Texans are going to be counting their lucky stars that they gave this great young man from the University of Houston a chance at a time when everyone else was willing to write him off as a “too small, systems-assisted quarterback”. He’s so much more than that gross misunderstanding of the man who starts today for the Houston Texans.

Go Get ‘Em, Case! Your jury can hardly wait!

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