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You might think that a team trading an exclusive rights free agent who was unlikely to make the team would barely qualify as news for a fan base. But when the team is the Houston Texans and the exclusive rights free agent unlikely to make the team is Case Keenum, you'd be dead wrong.
Texans traded QB Case Keenum back to the St. Louis Rams for a 7th-round pick in 2016, per league sources.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 10, 2015
After being signed out of a deer blind in December, the King of All Cougars performed admirably in his two starts at the end of the 2014 season; indeed, Case Keenum was undefeated as the Texans' starting QB in 2014 after being winless as the team's starter for eight games in 2013. Now he'll head back to St. Louis, the team that employed him after the Texans waived him at the end of training camp last year. The Rams, of course, made waves today by trading Sam Bradford to the Eagles for Nick Foles (along with some draft pick swaps).
Whether Keenum sticks with the Rams remains to be seen, but the future is quite possibly brighter for him there than it was in Houston, where the Texans currently figure to take some combination of Ryan Mallett, Brian Hoyer, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and/or Tom Savage to training camp. All of those QBs would be ahead of Case on the depth chart, so this move could benefit Case in the long and short-term.
For the Texans, it's a win. They traded a QB very unlikely to make their roster for an asset in the 2016 NFL Draft. A seventh-round pick in the 2016 NFL Draft (which, in a cool bit of coincidence, was what the Texans gave the Patriots in the trade to acquire Ryan Mallett) is better than nothing.
We await your reaction to this momentous news below.