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- Mar 20, 2019
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Case Keenum has played utterly competent football in recent years, only to find himself displaced amid a variety of dubious decisions.
This year, it was for a bad franchise which fired a coach in midseason and went with a rookie quarterback, who may or may not have been ready for the role. Now that the rookie’s hurt, Keenum’s back in the starting lineup for Washington, mopping up a season against the Cowboys.
So what do you do in such a situation?
“You play football, man,” Keenum said, via Les Carpenter of the Washington Post.
It’s a very zen outlook for a guy who is two years removed from leading the Vikings to 13 wins and to the NFC Championship Game, only to be displaced by a very expensive quarterback who can’t win games after dark. So he signed with the Broncos, but got caught in a coaching change and was shipped off so the G.M there could start Joe Flacco instead. Upon landing in Washington, he won the starting job in camp but nothing’s ever normal there so here we are.
“You know, there are things that they didn’t tell you as a kid, growing up, that you’ll have to deal with [as an NFL quarterback],” he said. “We’re playing a kids’ game. We’re just big kids playing a little kids’ game. We get paid for it, which is great. You just have to go out and have fun.”
Keenum’s a free agent again at the end of this season, and perhaps he’ll choose a place that operates in a sane manner this time.
“You get frustrated, but you deal with it,” Keenum said. “You control what you can control, you push through all the other noise that circles around, and when it comes down to it you play football and you love the guys in this locker room and you learn from it. You move on from it, and you grow.”
It’s a hard-won wisdom, the kind you only get from persevering through bad situations.