Case Keenum shows up in just a jockstrap to Buffalo Bills walkthrough practice

easlgrundle · May 25, 2023

Exerpted from a couple late 2022 articles (linked at the end) :

Matt Barkley stood in front of his locker, scrolling through photos on his phone. He searched for a specific video he took at a Buffalo Bills offensive install earlier this season. “It might not be safe for work,” he warned, squinting at his screen. “I might have put it in a secure folder.”

When the Bills’ third-string QB finally found the video he was looking for, he wisely decided not to turn around his phone to show it. Instead, he laughed as he relived the moment.

“I knew it was coming,” Barkley said. “Guys were laughing, it’s fun when you have cohesiveness and guys that are willing to laugh at that. Let alone Case (Keenum) who is willing to go through with it.”

Go through with what? The mysterious NSFW video that Barkley recorded on his phone that day in September was the result of an outlandish bet made in the Bills’ QB room in the name of protecting Josh Allen. During Buffalo’s Week 1 game, Keenum, the backup, and
Barkley noticed a moment when they thought Allen should have slid to protect himself.
Allen is famously nonchalant about his reckless playing style to the point where his veteran
backups have felt the need to intervene.
“I am probably putting Case through a nice roller coaster of emotion,” Allen said. “He’s
probably grabbing his helmet like, ‘Oh s—, do I need to go in or not?’”
“I play football,” Allen shrugged. “It happens sometimes.”
Knowing that Allen is also recklessly competitive, Keenum offered up a challenge.
“I might have incentivized him a little bit if he would slide during a game,” Keenum said. “It
was not a monetarily incentivized thing. It was more something that I would do …”
Sure enough, in Week 3 at Miami, Allen slid feet-first without being touched on an 8-yard
scramble in the fourth quarter. He ran forward through a hole in the Dolphins’ defense,
jerked left on a stick move and then slid forward well before two defenders closed in.
“Allegedly,” Keenum said, “I may or may not have told him I would wear only a jockstrap to
one of our walkthroughs if he slid in a game feet first with nobody around him.”
“Ahhh, phew, trying to jog my memory here,” Allen said, when asked about this bet in
December. He scratched his head and stared up at the ceiling. “I can neither confirm nor
deny those allegations. I’m sure some of the receivers and the running backs might have
something different to say about that, but I don’t really remember that.”
The Bills hold their Wednesday installs in their weight room so they can walk through each
play as they learn it. Receiver Isaiah McKenzie said he was walking into the weight room
with a fully-clothed Keenum when the quarterback told him he had to use the bathroom.
“Tell (offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey) I will be right there,’ Keenum told McKenzie.
When Keenum reappeared, he was wearing only a jockstrap. “We was all staring at his
cheeks,” McKenzie said.
Running back Taiwan Jones still busted up laughing when asked about this moment. “I’m
sorry,” he said, covering his mouth with his hands to stifle his giggles. “He just casually walked past everybody.”
“I was like, what the hell is going on?
“Bare butt cheeks,” said fullback Reggie Gilliam.

Quarterbacks coach Joe Brady said Keenum looked exactly how you would think someone wearing only a thin piece of fabric around their waste would look.

"Exactly how you could picture it," Brady told The Athletic. "I don't know if you want to picture that."

No one outside of the quarterback room was aware of the deal between Keenum and Allen, but wide receiver Isaiah McKenzie said he wasn't exactly shocked that one of the team's signal callers would do something like that.

"We all know that quarterback room is a little odd, so they do a lot of odd things."

What makes the Bills’ quarterback room ‘incredible’? It’s Josh Allen and a lot more