Keenum gets payback against Rams
Benched by L.A. last season, QB leads Minnesota to win over his former team
MINNEAPOLIS— Case Keenum sure took it to his old team.
He gave the Minnesota Vikings another reminder of his ability for good measure, with his status as the starting quarterback still not secure.
Latavius Murray rushed for 95 yards and two touchdowns, Adam Thielen turned a short catch into a 65-yard score and the Vikings smothered the NFL’s highest-scoring offence in a 24-7 win over the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.
Keenum completed 27 of 38 passes for 280 yards and no turnovers against the team that benched him last season for No. 1 overall draft pick Jared Goff. He guided the Vikings (8-2) to their sixth straight victory in a matchup of division leaders.
“I’m not at my best if I’m using a percentage of my mind in worry about other things,” he said, “so I shut that out and I come out to play.”
For another week, Keenum kept the Teddy Bridgewater talk on the backburner.
“It’s going to be hard to yank him out of there right now,” coach Mike Zimmer said.
“I still have really high hopes for Teddy, and a lot of things happen throughout the course of the season, so we’ll just see how it goes.”
Minnesota’s defence started the second half by forcing four punts in a row by the Rams (7-3), whose fourgame winning streak in which they scored144 points was finished in lopsided fashion. The Rams entered the week with a league-best third-down conversion rate of 46.7 per cent. They were just 3 for 11 against the Vikings.
“Football is really simple: You line up the man in front of you. You beat him,” said Vikings defensive end Everson Griffen, who returned from a foot injury, but had his eight-game sack streak stopped.
The Los Angeles defence was trampled in the second half for 288 yards, and Keenum went without a sack for the sixth game this season. “We talk about it every single week that you’ve got to be ready to go, because it is a very humbling league,” Rams coach Sean McVay said, “and I felt we got humbled today by a very good team.”
New Orleans extended its winning streak to eight games with an unlikely comeback, erasing a 15-point deficit inside the final six minutes or regulation and kicking a short field goal in overtime to defeat Washington.
Mark Ingram capped a 131-yard rushing performance with gains of 20 and 31 yards on back-to-back carries in overtime to set up Wil Lutz’s winning 28-yard kick.
Drew Brees passed for 385 yards and two touchdowns, going 11 of 11 for 164 yards and his only two touchdowns on New Orleans’ final two possessions of regulation. His first TD went to tight end Josh Hill with 2:53 to go and the last to Alvin Kamara with 1:05 left.