Bear Digest

How the Bears QB room shakes down after Case Keenum's signing

There are great benefits to having Keenum's experience in the Bears quarterbacks room, but it's also going to challenge Tyson Bagent and Austin Reed to make the team.

Gene Chamberlain

Caleb Williams, Tyson Bagent and Austin Reed will have the benefit of experience but also competition from Case Keenum.
Caleb Williams, Tyson Bagent and Austin Reed will have the benefit of experience but also competition from Case Keenum. / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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The Bears not only brought in a perfect backup quarterback match for starter Caleb Williams in terms of experience when they agreed to terms with Case Keenum, but they also found one with a background based on football knowledge their starter possesses.

Keenum can relate to Williams and also to Ben Johnson's offense.

In a way, Keenum can be their starting quarterback's interpreter along with his mentor.

Here's how this works and how their quarterback room could shape up during the 2025 season.

Background match

Keenum's college football experience included running the Air Raid offense under Kevin Sumlin and throwing for an NCAA record 20,114 career passing yards, a mark still standing. His 155 career touchdown passes stood until Miami's Cam Ward just broke it with 156.

It was also an updated version of that offense coach Lincoln Riley ran at Oklahoma and USC with Williams as his quarterback for three seasons.

Questions about the new Bears offense don't necessarily need to be answered for Williams by coaches now. Someone who can relate both to NFL offenses from experience with seven other teams and to the Air Raid background Williams has can be invaluable helping him understand what it is coach Ben Johnson wants done.

Grooming the young QB

All of this is critical because Johnson, himself, and none of his quarterback assistants really possess successful experience in the NFL at bringing along a young quarterback.  In a way, Keenum makes up for some of what the coaching staff lacks.

There is some of this on staff in an indirect way.

Press Taylor was involved as an assistant quarterback coach with the Eagles when Carson Wentz had 49 TD passes, 21 interceptions, 7,078 yards and an 88.8 rating while winning 18 of his first 29 career starts in 2016-17.

However, Taylor is Bears passing game coordinator and how much he'll interact with Williams is anyone's guess. Remember, when Thomas Brown went from passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator last season, it came out in a press conference that Williams had very little previous interaction with the new play caller during training camp, offseason or the regular season.

Eric Bieniemy was with the Chiefs as offensive coordinator in Patrick Mahomes' first season starting but had been a running backs coach when Mahomes was learning as a rookie in 2017 and started just one game. Bieniemy was critical in that first season as starter by Mahoms as coordinator but now with the Bears he isn't coaching quarterbacks. He'll coach running backs.

Quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett was working in Detroit as assistant quarterback coach with veteran Jared Goff for two years and the only young QB they had was Hendon Hooker, who has thrown only nine NFL passes.

Bears offensive coordinator Declan Doyle was with the Broncos during Bo Nix's successful rookie year but he was the tight ends coach.

So any bit of experience Chicago can bring to bear in the development of Williams is beneficial, and Keenum just got done serving in the same capacity behind C.J. Stroud with the Texans for two seasons.

More than a mentor

At 37, Keenum's ability to stand in and throw must be assumed until proven otherwise. It's not like his arm has been overused over the year. In the 2020s, he has thrown only 142 passes. He has thrown only 2,233 passes in his career dating back to 2012.

All of which begs the question, would he even beat out Bears backup Tyson Bagent as the player who replaces Williams?

It would seem unlikely Bagent would be the choice to replace Williams in a game over Keenum.

In Houston, Keenum was in a similar situation with Davis Mills on the roster as backup behind Stroud. However, the choice in 2023 to come into two games as starter when Stroud had a concussion was Keenum and not Mills. And remember, Mills had been the team's starter for two full seasons before Keenum returned to Houston.

Coach DeMeco Ryans called the decision one of seeing Keenum as the best choice to try and win that particular game against Tennessee and then the following week against Cleveland.

“He let our guys know he was ready for the moment, and he showed up and made big-time plays for us,” Ryans said.

Bagent's limited experience is a 2-2 record replacing Justin Fields in 2023, winning home games over two of the worst teams in the NFL that season, the Raiders and Panthers, and losing to New Orleans and the Chargers. This was after he came right out of NCAA Division II football.

So who gets the call, the experienced pro quarterback who authored the Minneapolis Miracle and ended a Vikings playoff curse with a win over the Saints or a former D-II passer with four starts and wins over two bad teams?

It's a no-brainer Keenum is first off the bench if something happens to Williams.

Tyson Bagent's Fate

This doesn't necessarily mean an end for Bagent. The Bears have him under contract this year but next year would likely lose the ability to keep him in free agency because he'll be a restricted free agent and usually a player who is undrafted and a backup is not getting tendered an offer. He'd go into the unrestricted market.

For one season, though, Bagent could stand to benefit himself from being around an experienced backup like Keenum in much the way Williams should. After all, Bagent has less playing experience than Williams does and the same benefit of Keenum's experience should apply to him.

Whether Bagent makes the roster is the real question. He's going to need to prove he should be around ahead of Austin Reed, who was on the practice squad last season.

Last year's staff felt Bagent deserved to stay ahead of Brett Rypien, even though Rypien led the NFL in passing during the preseason. And Rypien went to Minnesota.

That staff is gone and there is no more attachment to Bagent for Johnson's staff than there is to Reed. Maybe they wind up liking last year's third-stringer better.

The Bears, under Matt Eberflus, had only two quarterbacks on the active roster last year but the Lions had Goff, Teddy Bridgewater and Hooker all on the roster so it isn't as if Johnson has a problem keeping three active QBs.

The question becomes whether it would be Bagent or Reed.

It's after the 2025 season when the Bears would need to make some sort of decision on their backup QB going forward.

The pecking order wouldn't be quite as clear when Keenum is 38 years old and out of contract.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.