Case Keenum left the University of Houston with more career passing yards than any quarterback in the history of college football.
When he got to the NFL, though, there was so much he didn’t know — such as the difference between base defense and nickel and dime packages. Or even the fact that teams could flip their play calls based on which hash the ball was sitting on. In college, his Cougars simply ran plays right-handed.
“It blew my mind,” he said.
The Bears’ new veteran quarterback, then, can sympathize with second-year Caleb Williams learning a new offense and adjusting to the professional game. That education continues this week, when the Bears host their three-day mandatory minicamp starting Tuesday at Halas Hall.
“The NFL is a little bit different in how you can think about personnel groups, huddling, operation, play-calling … that you just don’t know what you don’t know sometimes in the system,” Keenum said. “It’s just a daily process of adding more tools to your tool belt until you look up and Caleb has been here 10 years with (coach) Ben (Johnson) and there are so many different plays they’ve run together that they’re speaking. … They don’t even have to speak to know what each other is thinking at times.
“I can see that happening.”
The Bears need Keenum to help them get there. General manager Ryan Poles didn’t keep a veteran quarterback on his in-season roster last year, preferring to lean on offensive assistant Ryan Griffin, a recent NFL alum. Tyson Bagent, the second-stringer behind Williams, was in Year 2. Austin Reed was a rookie.
The Bears learned the hard way their strategy wasn’t nurturing enough. The collective bargaining agreement only allows coaches so much time around players. A veteran quarterback, though, can spend as long as he wants around a protégé.
“From my experience of being in the room with (Keenum), he finds a good way to ask questions that I might not, or … we might not have provided the answer to prior,” Johnson said. “He does a good job filling those gaps. We’re constrained so much by the time limits in the springtime that he’s able to help the process when we’re not in there as coaches.”
Keenum is fighting Bagent for the No. 2 job, but both figure to be on the Bears’ roster all season. The 37-year-old with 66 career starts is best-known for leading the Vikings to the 2017 NFC title game. Keenum also played for the Texans in three separate stints and the Rams two times — in both St. Louis and Los Angeles — as well for the Broncos, Commanders, Browns and Bills.
When the Texans put him on IR with a foot injury in August, Keenum came close to retiring. The Bears asked to meet with him in March, though, and what was supposed to be a 15-minute get-to-know-you chat with Johnson went on for hours inside Halas Hall. The two talked football — but also where Keenum should live and what schools might work for his kids.
Keenum learned he and Johnson, whom he didn’t know before March, think about football the same way. Keenum watched film of Williams and saw someone who was good with “a chance to be a lot better.”
Keenum has seen young quarterbacks blossom before. He served as a backup for Bills quarterback Josh Allen in 2022 before spending the last two seasons as a mentor to Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud. In 2023, Stroud posted perhaps the greatest rookie quarterback season ever, throwing for 4,108 yards and becoming the youngest player ever to lead the NFL in touchdown-interception ratio.
“I learned that it’s really fun to lead from behind, not necessarily be the one out front but helping to support the guy who is leading in front,” Keenum said. “Among a lot of other things, that was pretty special to me.”
The Bears will be thrilled if he can do that again.
