This couldn’t have been the way Case Keenum imagined finishing the season, standing in the Washington Redskins locker room Thursday afternoon, talking about a salvaged start in the last game of a lost year. But this wasn’t the way most of the Redskins imagined their season would end. The disaster has happened, now it’s time to pick up what little pieces are left.
“You play football, man,” Keenum said.
He crossed his arms and kicked at the carpet with his cleats as the team’s left tackle, Donald Penn, reached around him for a stool. He smiled, even though this hasn’t been a smiling season for a quarterback who had won the starting job in training camp only to see it eventually go to the team’s first-round draft pick, Dwayne Haskins.
Suddenly relevant, after weeks of irrelevance, Keenum laughed.
“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, 31, will start Sunday’s game at Dallas, less than three hours from his hometown of Abilene, Texas, not because the team believes in his future here – his contract expires after the season – but because there is no one else. Haskins is in a walking boot with a sprained ankle and interim head coach Bill Callahan has shown little interest in playing the team’s longtime backup, Colt McCoy.
It’s a weird limbo for a player who less than two years ago nearly took the Minnesota Vikings to the Super Bowl, and then signed a $36 million contract to lead the Denver Broncos. But nothing about the last few months has been good for Keenum. After having been hopeful in his two recent stops that he had finally shaken the label of a journeyman placeholder, he became just that, filling in as Washington’s starter during seven of the first eight weeks until a concussion knocked him out of the lineup and the job went to Haskins on a full-time basis.
In that time, he threw for 1,442 yards and nine touchdowns against only four interceptions, but lost all but one of his starts. He had 158 yards and another touchdown in a frantic comeback against the Giants last week in relief of Haskins that could have stood as his defining moment in Washington had the Redskins not allowed the Giants to storm downfield in overtime.
Now, he’s the last starting quarterback of a ruined season, playing on a team that will dress several players who weren’t on the roster before this month. He could be bitter. He has, at times, sounded angry about broken situations in other cities with other teams. On Thursday, he just shrugged.
“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.”
He looked around the room, filling with players coming in from that day’s practice. He knows he is unlikely to play with most of them again, a feeling that is unfamiliar for a quarterback who is on his fifth team in eight years. With the Redskins at 3-12, no one much is playing for today, with Sunday’s game being about the future for almost everyone, including the coaches.
“I mean that’s the name of this league, that’s how it goes every time,” Keenum said. “You’re trying to extend your career and trying to put your resume on tape. . . . Every time you step on the field that’s your resume, it’s a video resume. That’s what I try to do. That’s why I play hard every snap.”
Thursday was not a time to be introspective. Keenum kept glancing at the digital clock across the room, aware he had a meeting to attend. There wasn’t much to say, anyway, about a year that started off with promise and is ending like this, with a room filled with unfamiliar players. He said he was looking forward to playing in Texas and that someday he will be able to tell his kids he handed the ball off to Adrian Peterson.
Mostly, he was living his final days in a locker room that probably won’t be his next year. He didn’t need to spend much time talking about the place. He still has a game to prepare to start. His face brightened.
“[Let’s] make this thing interesting,” he said of the game at Dallas. “Who knows? Let’s see.”
