Case Keenum’s Revenge Game Presents Credibility Problems for Bill O’Brien: All-Time UH Great is Much More Believable Than Texans Coach on Cruel Third String Diss

Case Keenum’s revenge game is here — and Houston Texans coach Bill O’Brien’s memory is suddenly spotty. The Ivy League educated coach just can’t recall. It is like O’Brien thinks he’s testifying at the Kavanaugh hearings rather than addressing a simple question in his regular press conference.

Keenum details in his book, Playing for More: Trust Beyond What You Can See, that O’Brien told him he’d never be more than a third-string quarterback in the NFL. This conversation happened as O’Brien cut Keenum before his first season as the Texans coach, during the time the Texans coach was obsessed with Ryan Mallett.

With the Texans traveling to Denver to face Keenum and the Broncos this Sunday, this of course comes up in O’Brien’s Monday press conference. That’s when things get a little foggy for Houston’s coach. Perhaps J.J. Watt head butted O’Brien after that explosive win over the Miami Dolphins last Thursday night?

“He wrote that in his book?” O’Brien says when asked directly about the third-string comment. “I guess I’ll have to read his book. I’ll have to order that on Amazon.”

Really? Why not just cop to making an obvious misevaluation? O’Brien never believed in Keenum, despite the fact that the former University of Houston icon saved the coach’s first season on Kirby Drive when he came out of a deer blind to win the last two games of that season. And Case Keenum proved him wrong. Just give the player the credit for doing that, and move on.

O’Brien’s certainly not the first coach to completely miss on a player. Trying to play word games and saying he doesn’t “remember” makes O’Brien come off as petty and still a little bitter about the fact he’s been proven wrong. The Texans coach should be bigger than that.

Despite QB whiff after QB whiff after QB whiff, O’Brien somehow landed in a good place — thanks in part to former Texans general manager Rick Smith, He has Watson now. He should be above playing games about what happened with Keenum at his point. Just give this relentless worker the credit for proving your harsh dig was foolish.

“Case is a good quarterback,” O’Brien says later in his first press conference of Denver week, Keenum week.

O’Brien may think he’s deflecting and trampling down any potential controversy the week of a game, but he’s actually adding more fuel to the narrative. Going into Denver to play a desperate 3-5 Broncos team that has the type of pass rush that can terrorize Deshaun Watson and the Texans’ still suspect offensive line is tough enough on its own. Poking Keenum — who clearly would love to beat O’Brien’s team as much as he philosophically doesn’t believe in revenge — by trying to imply that the QB might have misremembered one of the most important meetings of his life is just silly.

The problem for O’Brien is that Case Keenum’s credibility is much higher than the coach’s on this topic.

Case Keenum’s Word

Expect Keenum to take the high road during the week because that’s what he does. But the QB’s book is clear. He details the day he was cut by O’Brien extensively.

“I knew the Texans were going to release me once I got the call, so I drove to the facility feeling pretty bad,” Keenum writes. “Bad. But not entirely hopeless. I wanted to face my destiny like a man. I also wanted to get some feedback from the coaches after they’d spent the offseason with me. I wanted to at least find out where I could improve and maybe even get some advice on taking the next step as a player. That’s not what happened.

“Coach O’Brien looked right at me and told me I’d never be more than a third-string quarterback in the NFL. I knew I hadn’t performed as well as I could that preseason, but I couldn’t help but feel some anger. He went on to give some more specifics, but I didn’t process much after that. Here I am coming off a season in which I started eight games, some good games, some bad games, and now I was being told that I couldn’t play at this level?”

O’Brien is not the only one who completely whiffed on projecting Keenum’s future. The prevalent anti-UH crowd at 610 AM also discounted and dismissed Keenum at every opportunity.

I guess the Texans coach can take solace in the fact that he’s just as stubbornly ignorant as Nick Wright, the now FS1 voice, who’s also never admitted to being wrong on Keenum despite swearing that the NCAA record breaker would never start for an NFL team. But is that really a boat you want to jump into?

Keenum is the handpicked $36 million starter for Broncos general manager John Elway, a man who knows a thing or two about quarterbacks. He led the Minneosta Vikings to a game of the Super Bowl last season, pulling off the Minneapolis Miracle against the Saints.

Remember when all those experts claimed that Keenum couldn’t throw the deep ball? He’s tied for the NFL lead in completions of 40-plus yards this season with eight in eight games, the same as Chiefs wunderkind Patrick Mahomes, who’s only getting a little publicity. Even in an uneven first half of his first season in Denver, Case Keenum’s still putting up stats. He came a few incompletions from toppling Mahomes and the 7-1 Chiefs on Sunday.

Now, he gets his first shot at the coach who told him he’d never be anything more than a scrub.

“I’m not sure if he was trying to motivate me or what, but it definitely got my competitive juices flowing,” Keenum writes of O’Brien’s harsh cut day “analysis” in his book. “I knew this wasn’t the end.”

Suddenly, Bill O’Brien’s memory is a little shaky. Case Keenum has not forgotten though.

Are you still wondering who is the bigger man?