If his five-year-old is to be believed, then Case Keenum has nothing to worry about if he wants to relive the glory of his Chicago Bears’ Monday Night Football win over the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I’m gonna have fun watching the game with them tomorrow on the couch,” the quarterback, 38, told ESPN’s Laura Rutledge on the field after the game on Monday, September 28. “Or probably just Bluey. They probably won’t want to watch it again.”
Keenum and his wife, Kimberly, share son Kyler, 6, and daughter Cadence, 5. The whole family was at Soldier Field on Monday for the win, which saw Case play for the first time in more than 1,000 days after he filled in for starting quarterback Caleb Williams, who is battling a hamstring injury.
The veteran quarterback also spoke to ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter later that night, holding Cadence in his arms.
“Daddy said that tomorrow when he wants to watch the game, he thinks maybe you’re going to want to watch Bluey instead,” Van Pelt, 60, told her. “Are you going to watch the game tomorrow or do you want to watch Bluey?”
Cadence confidently replied, “The game.”
It was the perfect cap to an evening that was all about family, for Case. Rutledge, 37, asked Case before the game started what being back on the field meant to him.
“Are you kidding me?” he replied. “I just hugged my family. Had a great week of practice with the boys. I’ve enjoyed every minute of this. I really have.”
Case continued, “It means everything. It’s incredible. We always say, ‘Keenums can do hard things.’ So we’ll do some hard things tonight, and hopefully I can show them how it’s done.”
After the game, he was sure to shout out his wife as well.
“Kimberly, she’s been here the whole ride,” he told Rutledge. “I wouldn’t be here without her either.”
Case’s stats weren’t so bad, either. He threw for 247 yards and two touchdowns while rushing for one more. It made him the oldest player in the Bears’ 107-year history to record a rushing touchdown.
“As a kid you dream about it,” he told reporters. “You know, you feel like you can. I don’t know if you think about the week that it takes, the work that it takes in the offseason to clean up your diet. You work extremely hard to get your body back to where it needs to be. You go through a training camp as the [third quarterback on the depth chart] and grind out some reps, you’re getting a few reps a day. You know, to get a shot again to do it like this, I mean, yeah, you dream of it.”
He continued, “That’s why I’m still here, still doing this, why I’m still getting up. And I’ve been knocked down my whole career. I just keep getting up. Keep coming to work and keep bouncing back.”
The Bears return to action on Sunday, October 4, when they host the New York Jets. With Williams still out with injury, the team has not announced if they intend to stick with Keenum, or turn to backup quarterback Tyson Bagent, who has been dealing with a concussion.
