All eyes on Keeton
He’ll be the first to tell you it’s a team sport. That it’s not about him. That no one player is solely responsible for the team’s success — even if that player is the starting quarterback. He’ll regularly ignore standard signing etiquette, happily autographing footballs for kids anywhere except near the laces, where the names of prominent players are supposed to go.
He preaches the team-first mentality so convincingly, believes in it so genuinely, it’s often difficult to remember that in this rare instance, it really is all about him.
This year is about Chuckie Keeton.
Keeton doesn’t need to line his locker with press clippings to have confidence in himself, and he certainly has no use for statistics. His focus in his fifth and final year of eligibility is dead set on the one accolade that has thus eluded Utah State’s talented squad — a Mountain West championship.
Of course, for the thrice-injured playmaker, the road to a conference title is one walked with baby steps.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve worn my pants,” Keeton noted at the annual end-of-summer Mountain West media frenzy. “Jersey, you wear that every time. But pants, that’s different.”
Keeton was last spotted in full uniform limping off the field in the middle of a game against Wake Forest. Even the most optimistic fans knew caution was being taken, that perhaps Keeton — not yet at full strength after shredding his knee against BYU in 2013 — needed just a little more time to get healthy.
All such hopes were shot the second Keeton was spotted roaming the sidelines sans pads, aided by a pair of crutches he obviously loathed. Thus began a seemingly endless cycle of worn-out ligaments and broken bones for anyone who dared take Utah State’s starting quarterback position.
Aggie fans enjoyed five games of solid play from backup Darell Garretson, who notably unleashed his cannon of an arm on in-state rival BYU’s secondary before suffering a broken wrist against CSU.
Then it was Craig Harrison’s turn — he made it through all of three quarters against UNLV before a monster hit sidelined him with a knee injury.
By the first week of November, what was supposed to be Keeton’s final season somehow led to true freshman Kent Myers taking over the starting role against Hawai’i — and scorching the Rainbow Warriors for 186 yards and three touchdowns on 14-of-15 passing.
“Myers mania” was born, and a fourth-string quarterback was as widely celebrated in Logan as anyone on the team — safe to say nobody saw that coming.
After all that madness, Keeton returns for an incredibly rare fifth season as an opening day starter — a position he’s held since before head coach Matt Wells first took over.
“I think he really relishes his last and final opportunity,” Wells said. “Sometimes when you get things taken away from you, I think you cherish things a little harder.”
Though Keeton’s skill as a player and his charm as a person make it difficult to address any seeds of doubt welling up inside, there remains a subtle, familiar feeling as Keeton gears up for one more go-around.
He says he’s healthy. He certainly looks healthy. He even has a much improved weight lifting regimen to prove he’s far more prepared than he was last year.
“This past year was a lesser injury, so I didn’t have to start at ground zero,” Keeton said. “I’ve been able to squat this year, which is a big difference between this year and the year before.”
But the USU faithful have been down this road before. The Auburn game that marked Keeton’s arrival on the college football scene seems so long ago. Much has happened since then — bowl victories, changes to the coaching staff and a jump to a better conference, to name a few. Nobody can deny Keeton played a role in ushering in this new era of consistently good — sometimes great — Aggie football teams, and he even notes the difference in the program’s attitude since he first arrived.
“Freshman year, we worried about getting to a bowl game,” Keeton said. “And I think that’s a big difference in our athletics now. The standard we set for ourselves continues to be raised.”
However, after elevating USU’s football program to new heights his freshman year, Keeton hasn’t quite gotten the chance to finish what he started.
“We always have the goal to win a conference championship because that’s something we can control,” Keeton said. “The second one is to win a bowl game. The last one is to win the state. If I throw for 200 yards and we do all three of those things? Big year.”
That’s what a fully healthy Keeton can bring to the table. As impressive as Myers and Garretson were, the Aggies crumbled in Boise last fall and couldn’t capture the conference title game the year before. The team was missing the guy who made those dreams of bowl wins and conference titles possibilities to begin with. Now with all manner of preseason praise in his wake, Keeton is ready to put the hype behind him and take a run at the Mountain West crown.
“It’s cool to get every single preseason award, but how I see it, that’s like a glorified prediction,” Keeton said. “A lot of other players didn’t have the preseason heisman, like a lot of people didn’t know who Johnny Manziel was before the season — now I’m from Texas so I knew, but you just want to build as you go. You want your resume to speak for you.”
Specifically addressing the movement around Cache Valley suggesting Keeton is a darkhorse heisman candidate, the fifth-year senior responded pretty much exactly how you’d expect from a guy who shies away from the spotlight.
“It’s nice, I appreciate everything the school has done for me with the heisman thing,” Keeton said. “It’s nice to kind of dial it back a little bit because I’d rather show it than have anything said about it.”
He’ll certainly have a chance to show it throughout the Aggies’ 2015 campaign, as USU plays host to CSU, BYU, Air Force and defending conference champs Boise State. Boise, the Mountain West’s perennial heavyweight, has never faced a Keeton-led Aggie squad.
“I’m sure most people think staying healthy is my main goal, but that’s not really on my mind. That’s just kind of a given,” Keeton said. “I don’t want any stat line or anything like that. As long as we win a Mountain West Championship, I’m cool. We don’t have that ring or that trophy yet, so that’ll be nice to get. I held onto the trophy at media day and it like, molded to my hand for a second. Hopefully we can get that back here.”
“He’s everything to Utah State,” Wells added. “But also, if you listen to him, he’ll tell you everything Utah State has done for him.”