Adjectives that describe Case Keenum's play in Monday's season-opening shutout loss to the San Francisco 49ers: Atrocious, lousy, awful, eye-gouging, dreadful, horrible, terrible, rotten, unwatchable, abhorrent, painful, agonizing, tormenting, ignominious, wearisome, irritating, shoddy, abominable ...
Keenum completed 17 of 35 passes for a putrid (another adjective!) 130 yards passing with two interceptions. Of the 32 quarterbacks who threw passes Week 1, Keenum finished last in passer rating (34.2), last in passing yards per attempt (3.7), and tied for most interceptions. The only quarterback with a worse completion percentage than Keenum's 48.6 was Cleveland Browns passer Robert Griffin III.
It wasn't just that Keenum missed more than 50 percent of his passes, it was that he was so comically off target on so many throws he made Blaine Gabbert look like Joe Montana.
"I think I was seeing ghosts," Keenum said of his struggles against the 49ers," via The L.A. Times. "I was seeing things that weren't there. I wasn't trusting myself and my abilities."
Keenum insisted that the problems were mental, not physical.
"It was me overthinking it: 'Maybe they were going to this because of this, this and this,'" he said. "Just trust what you see and let it fly, and that's what I'm going to do."
NFL Network's Steve Wyche reported that the 49ersknew what routes the Rams were running based on alignment. If true that partially explains Keenum's sad night. There could also be another reason: He's just not very good.
The 28-year-old nomad has shown flashes of excitement in certain spurts within games in the past after going undrafted in 2012, but this is still a career 56 percent passer that routinely puts up mediocre yards per pass attempt numbers and struggles to get through his progressions.
Sure, Keenum's receivers in L.A. might be one of the worst groups in the NFL, but he's also facing fewer men in coverage, with defenses stacking the box to stop Todd Gurley.
Teams are daring the Rams to complete a pass. They can't do it.
Jeff Fisher will continue to toss the Keenum log onto the fire until he thinks No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff is ready. Reading the rookie's quote, he'd like to see the field sooner rather than later:
"You can see the defense from a different angle and see the speed from the sideline," he said, "but the best way to really know what's going on out there is to be in it."
During the duration of August, Goff displayed no indications he's ready to take on NFL defenses, but he can't be worse than Keenum was Monday night. Even Keenum can't be worse than Keenum was Monday night (I hope).