Teddy B vs Case "Buc Slayer" Keenum vs Sammy B

Case Keenum is playing the best football of his career, and that probably means he’s not going to stay a Viking for very long.

Ranking eighth in adjusted net yards per attempt, 14th in passer rating and third in ESPN’s Total QBR, Keenum’s passing is miles ahead of where it was last season — 28th, 27th and 30th in those respective statistics— or his career, where he ranks 30th and 32nd in ANYA and passer rating of 33 quarterbacks with 1,000 attempts.

At the moment, Keenum seems to be playing himself into a starting job somewhere, and if the Vikings are as confident in Teddy Bridgewater as they appear to be, it will be difficult to re-sign him and Keenum at the same time.

Much has been made of rising quarterback values for otherwise mid-tier players — and we’ve noted those as well — and nothing exemplifies that better than Mike Glennon’s contract with the Chicago Bears, something that pops up in nearly every discussion about quarterback contracts.

There’s not much that actually connects Glennon’s situation with Keenum’s. Glennon had been effectively benched three times throughout his tenure in Tampa Bay. After starting 13 games in 2013 for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the team signed Josh McCown to start over Glennon.

Glennon started five games in 2014 when McCown injured his thumb, but was benched swiftly afterward. In 2015, the Buccaneers let McCown hit free agency, but instead of giving Glennon free reign over the offense, the team opted to draft Jameis Winston first overall.

The North Carolina State product never performed all that well aside from a few statistical quirks, with a respectable touchdown-to-interception ratio in 2013 (19:9) but not much else — he ranked 29th in adjusted net yards per attempt, 38th (!) in net yards per attempt and 37th in yards per attempt.

Despite all that, the Chicago Bears invested $45 million over three years in Glennon, even though he hadn’t played meaningful football for three seasons when they signed him.

Glennon signed his contract with the Bears at 27 years of age and could have been conceivably pitched as a potential franchise quarterback. He didn’t have too many passing attempts (630) or starting years (one) under his belt, which means he didn’t have much time to put many bad throws on film — so those that liked him coming out of college can project his best qualities on him without having to overcome years of bad play to tamp it down.

Keenum, on the other hand, has had 1,039 passing attempts — and could finish the year with over 1,300 — and three years where he’s started for most of the season. There’s less room for error, and he’s had more than one down season.

When negotiating his next contract, he’ll be 30 years old and already past his “prime” — a term that has lost some meaning with players like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees pushing the theoretical maximum age for quarterbacks, but still carries weight in negotiations.

But there are a few quarterbacks who have had unusual peak seasons in a contract year, and we can compare those rare quarterback moments to the Keenum situation.

This is a film study of the relative strengths of all three QBs we've started in the last two years, where they differ, and what to expect out of a Teddy Bridgewater-run offense compared to when Sam or Case are calling the shots. This post ended up pretty long.