Washington is bringing on Case Keenum. He won’t help anyone win a fantasy league, but I like the move. He at least gives them another option with some experience and ability as they try to work their way out of salary cap hell.
After trading for Alex Smith last year, Washington signed him to an extension including $71 million in guaranteed money. He’s trying to recover from a career-threatening leg fracture (he probably won’t even play in 2019) so the team needs to fill out the rest of the quarterbacking room on a budget.
They’ve got Colt McCoy. He might start some games. Josh Johnson might make the team. Keenum probably will be their opening day starter.
Keenum is too limited physically to ever develop into an above-average starter, but he’s had some success in recent years. He played well enough in 2016 to beat out Jared Goff in Los Angeles. Goff was the No. 1 overall pick, but anybody who watched Hard Knocks that year could see that Keenum was far ahead of him at that time, with a much better grasp of what the Rams were trying to do offensively.
The next year, Keenum came off the bench early in the season and helped Minnesota reach the NFC Championship game.
Keenum wasn’t as impressive last year in Denver, but that entire team fell apart. For the final third of the season, Emmanuel Sanders and Demaryius Thomas were gone, both tight ends were hurt, and Keenum was trying to direct inexperienced youngsters on the field.
Keenum went only 6-10 last year, but he went 20-10 in the previous four seasons. Remarkably, he’s won multiple games as a starter while playing for teams located in five different cities in the last five years – Houston, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Denver. (Makes for an interesting trivia question, and note that Washington has now made notable quarterback trades with all four teams in the AFC West – Keenum, Smith, Jay Schroder, Stan Humphries.)
As far as putting up big numbers, however, that’s unlikely to happen. Keenum doesn’t have a dynamic arm. He’s more of a game manager type, rather than a difference maker that coaches want to attack defenses with. He’s averaged 243 passing yards in the last three years, with 46 TDs versus 33 interceptions. He’s not much of a runner.
Even when he was going 11-3 as a starter with the Vikings a year ago, he finished with only average numbers. In the 14 games he started, he averaged 243 passing yards, with 21 TDs and 7 interceptions.
Over the past three years, 27 quarterbacks have started at least half the time. Only three have averaged less production than Keenum (using standard scoring), and they’re all lesser guys – Trevor Siemian, Joe Flacco and Ryan Tannehill.
| QUARTERBACKS, 2016-18 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | St | Pass | Run | TD | Int | FPG |
| Andrew Luck, Ind. | 31 | 285 | 16 | 2.32 | .90 | 25.5 |
| Aaron Rodgers, G.B. | 39 | 270 | 20 | 2.23 | .38 | 25.0 |
| Ben Roethlisberger, Pitt. | 45 | 293 | 4 | 2.11 | .96 | 24.0 |
| Matt Ryan, Atl. | 48 | 291 | 8 | 2.02 | .54 | 23.8 |
| Drew Brees, N.O. | 47 | 288 | 1 | 2.13 | .60 | 23.4 |
| Tom Brady, N.E. | 44 | 284 | 3 | 2.07 | .48 | 23.0 |
| Russell Wilson, Sea. | 48 | 243 | 25 | 1.98 | .60 | 23.0 |
| Cam Newton, Car. | 45 | 227 | 36 | 1.78 | .96 | 22.9 |
| Kirk Cousins, Was.-Min. | 48 | 277 | 8 | 1.90 | .73 | 22.8 |
| Jameis Winston, T.B. | 38 | 270 | 15 | 1.74 | 1.05 | 22.3 |
| Philip Rivers, LAC | 48 | 275 | 1 | 1.94 | .90 | 21.8 |
| Carson Wentz, Phil. | 40 | 254 | 14 | 1.80 | .70 | 21.7 |
| Dak Prescott, Dall. | 48 | 227 | 20 | 1.77 | .52 | 21.2 |
| Jared Goff, LAR | 38 | 252 | 5 | 1.82 | .68 | 20.7 |
| Matthew Stafford, Det. | 48 | 261 | 8 | 1.58 | .65 | 20.4 |
| Blake Bortles, Jac. | 44 | 233 | 23 | 1.45 | .91 | 20.4 |
| Alex Smith, K.C.-Was. | 40 | 243 | 16 | 1.45 | .45 | 20.0 |
| Derek Carr, Oak. | 46 | 250 | 4 | 1.52 | .63 | 19.4 |
| Mitchell Trubisky, Chi. | 26 | 208 | 26 | 1.38 | .73 | 19.3 |
| Andy Dalton, Cin. | 43 | 235 | 9 | 1.58 | .72 | 19.1 |
| Tyrod Taylor, Buf.-Cle. | 32 | 191 | 34 | 1.31 | .38 | 19.0 |
| Marcus Mariota, Ten. | 43 | 211 | 22 | 1.37 | .74 | 18.7 |
| Eli Manning, NYG | 47 | 251 | 1 | 1.45 | .85 | 18.6 |
| Case Keenum, 3 tms | 39 | 243 | 7 | 1.33 | .85 | 18.4 |
| Ryan Tannehill, Mia. | 24 | 207 | 13 | 1.58 | .88 | 18.2 |
| Joe Flacco, Balt. | 41 | 242 | 4 | 1.29 | .83 | 18.0 |
| Trevor Siemian, Den. | 24 | 231 | 7 | 1.21 | 1.00 | 17.3 |
Best I can offer on Keenum’s behalf is that Washington has tended to be pretty aggressive with the passing game. Jay Gruden has been there for five years, and the team has ranked in the top 12 in passing in all but one of those seasons. They had a bottom-10 passing game last year, but they ranked 8th, 12th, 3rd and 10th in passing the previous four years. (Of course, Sean McVay was the coordinator for three of those teams, and in hindsight he might have been the No. 1 driving force behind those offenses).
Washington has some decent pass-catching weapons. Jordan Reed, Chris Thompson, Jamison Crowder, Paul Richardson, Josh Doctson. Keenum won’t be one of the top 20 quarterbacks on my board, but some chance that he outperforms about 10 of the other starting quarterbacks this year.
—Ian Allan