What starting Case Keenum means for the Browns' passing offense

Baker Mayfield’s shoulder injury means he won’t play in Week 7 for the Cleveland Browns. Fortunately for them, head coach Kevin Stefanski has a backup plan.

The Browns signed Case Keenum to a three-year, $18 million contract in 2020 that made him the league’s third-highest paid backup quarterback. The move reunited him with Stefanski, who helped craft the best season of the journeyman’s career as Minnesota Vikings’ quarterbacks coach in 2017. That fall, the Jeff Fisher exile came off the bench to lead the Vikes to a 12-3 record in games where he threw at least 20 passes. He was the big arm on the other end of the Minneapolis Miracle that winter:

Leaving the Twin Cities ultimately led to disappointment as he languished in Denver and Washington before settling for a high-value backup role in Ohio. Now Keenum, 33, will have the chance to prove he’s still capable of leading a Stefanski offense to glory in prime time.

Bettors aren’t convinced he’ll come through. The Cleveland went from a -170 moneyline favorite down to -130 while the Broncos moved from +135 to +105 in the hours after the Mayfield news dropped, per Tipico. What kind of dropoff can the Browns expect in the transition from Mayfield to Keenum? A look at his 2017 provides a rough road map.

Cleveland is going to have to dial back its downfield passing

Keenum and Mayfield are fairly similar. Both were overlooked high school recruits who had to settle for second-tier Texas football programs. Both exceeded collegiate expectations en route to historic careers. Both ended up in Cleveland, where they’re listed at 6’1 and 215 pounds.

Still, Stefanski will have to tweak his offense to fit Keenum behind center. The veteran excelled in Minnesota with a mostly short-range passing game despite his big arm. His average pass traveled only 7.3 air yards — 28th-longest among qualified QBs that fall despite the presence of big-time wideouts Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen on the roster. Mayfield, by comparison, ranks sixth in the NFL with an average pass that travels 9.4 yards downfield in 2021.

This doesn’t mean Keenum is incapable of slinging the ball, but rather that Minnesota was happy to use shorter routes to open up bigger gains. Keenum threw roughly six screens per game as a Viking, generating low-risk yardage and increasing the impact of a tailback group that averaged fewer than four yards per carry. This helped create space downfield when offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur gave him the green light to find Thielen and Diggs downfield:

What you see above is something we’ll likely see against the Broncos; play-action passing. Stefanski used that simple concept often to help rehabilitate Mayfield after a dreadful sophomore campaign in the NFL by allowing a little more time in the pocket and new openings downfield. However, he dialed back his play action play calls (from 7.6 per game to 6.3) as the young quarterback settled in to his new offense in 2021.

Breaking in a backup could mean a return to that tenet. There’s another part of the “rebuilding Baker” playbook that may not translate to Keenum’s first start as a Brown.

One of Stefanski’s important 2020 moves to prop up his starter was to rely on designed rollouts to trim Mayfield’s do-too-much tendencies. By freeing up streaking wideouts, reducing pressure, and limiting his QB’s cone of vision, the first-year coach was able to turn the Browns into a playoff team. This was a part of Minnesota’s strategy with its 2017 backup as well.

Will we see Keenum take on the section of the playbook that pushes the passer out of the pocket and toward the sideline? It’s possible, but feels unlikely. Mayfield is the better runner of the two; he’s both younger and more mobile. Keenum is capable of making throws on the run and is fairly accurate in these situations, but he lacks Mayfield’s timing. Even when he escapes to deliver a perfect strike, there’s often disaster lurking because he throws the ball a split-second too late.

The Vikings could get away with this added risk because they had the league’s No. 1 ranked defense in 2017. The Browns have the raw talent to play like a top five unit, but hasn’t gotten there yet. They’ve struggled through ups and downs that will mitigate just how much Stefanski trusts his QB to take chances, especially with a compromised group of skill players.

The Browns’ injuries elsewhere are really going to limit his efficacy

Cleveland has the league’s top running back platoon. Neither one of those guys will be available Thursday night. Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt will each miss Week 7 due to injury, pushing running back duties to D’Ernest Johnson and Demetric Felton.

This isn’t foreign to Keenum. In 2017 he saw Dalvin Cook’s rookie campaign cut short by an ACL tear. Cook’s replacements, Latavius Murray and Jerick McKinnon, were mostly average in relief. Even so, Murray and McKinnon in 2017 were a much better duo than Johnson and Felton in 2021.

That throws a wrench into Stefanski’s game plan. Keenum works best when play-action frees up space in the intermediate part of the field. Who is going to be so threatened by Johnson (3.7 yards per carry) and Felton (zero pro carries) they sell out to stop the run?

Unfortunately for Keenum, his offensive line may not be the boon we thought it was coming into the season. Cleveland entered 2021 as PFF’s top offensive line while the 2017 Vikes clocked in at No. 22. In the weeks since, injuries to Jedrick Wills and Jack Conklin have helped push Mayfield’s sack rate to a career-worst 9.4 percent. Both have missed practice time this week. Losing either would throw the passing game back into a tempest of quick throws to redirect pressure.

That’s where a veteran possession receiver like Jarvis Landry could spin hay into gold, but he’s on injured reserve. Odell Beckham Jr. may fill that role, but he continues to underwhelm as a Brown. Instead, tight ends David Njoku and Austin Hooper will have to step into the void for short-range passes like Kyle Rudolph in ’17 (57 catches, 532 yards, eight touchdowns in a Pro Bowl campaign–feels like a good night to bet the Browns’ tight ends for an anytime TD!).

This also ups the expectations on young wideouts Donovan Peoples-Jones and Rashard Higgins to have a Diggs-like impact when Keenum does air it out. Peoples-Jones is riding a fantasy wave of adulation after last week’s 101-yard, two touchdown performance, but Higgins is the guy who helped out his quarterback the most in 2020. Both have been targeted 12+ yards downfield on average this season, so look for them when Keenum gets the green light against cover-one coverage:

What can we expect from Keenum given his success with Stefanski in 2017 and the Browns’ current offense and injured list?

• An uptick in short-range throws and screens, even with Cleveland’s top two RBs hurt
• Plenty of play-action passes, but fewer roll-outs
• Short passes to Beckham Jr., Njoku, and Hooper
• An occasional deep shot to Higgins and Peoples-Jones

Will that be enough to topple the Broncos and their star-laden defense? The Vikings version of Keenum had two of his best days against the top-10 passing defenses of Los Angeles and Washington in 2017. Denver, doesn’t even rank in the top 20 this year. It’ll be tough to recapture the glory of four years ago, but we’ve got a pretty good idea of how Kevin Stefanski and the Browns can do it.