Mike Simpson

Dad, Husband, Construction enthusiast, avid fan of the sport of football and basketball, SaintsFan, lover of life!...Music is the soul of the world !

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

Case Keenum has been in the NFL since 2012. Until Monday night, his two kids had never seen him play a game.

Not one. Not ever.

Here is what he said before kickoff.

"It means everything. It's incredible because we always say 'Keenum's can do hard things.' So we'll do some hard things tonight. And hopefully I can show them tonight how it's done."

He is 38 years old. He was the third quarterback on the Chicago Bears depth chart.

Caleb Williams was ruled out. Backup Tyson Bagent went into concussion protocol. So the job fell to the guy nobody expected to take another snap in his life.

It had been 1,009 days since Case Keenum started a regular season NFL game. The last one was Christmas Eve of 2023 with the Houston Texans.

His son Kyler was born in November of 2019. His daughter Cadence was born in April of 2021.

Which means Case Keenum has been an NFL quarterback for every single day that either of his children has been alive, and neither one of them had ever seen him play a game. Cadence was two years old the last time he started one.

He arrived at Soldier Field carrying what looked like a paper sack, dressed like a man on his way to a parent teacher conference. The internet had a wonderful time with it. Somebody said his wife must have packed him a lunch.

That wife is Kimberly. The family calls her the logistical ninja, because she is the one who has packed and unpacked their whole life through the Houston Texans, the Rams, the Minnesota Vikings, the Denver Broncos, Washington, the Cleveland Browns, the Buffalo Bills, Houston again, and now the Chicago Bears.

This is also the man who threw for 19,217 yards at Houston, which is still the most in the history of college football, and then went undrafted.

Then the game started.

24 of 34. 247 yards. Two touchdowns. No interceptions. Not sacked one time.

Eight yards to Luther Burden III in the first quarter. Forty one yards to Kalif Raymond in the third. Then in the fourth he kept it himself and walked it in from a yard out.

Three touchdowns from a third string quarterback.

Chicago Bears 27, Philadelphia Eagles 7.

When it ended he walked off hyping up the crowd in the north end zone, and the whole stadium stood up for him.

And then came the part nobody could have written.

Keenum went out to do his postgame interview on the SportsCenter set. His daughter came with him. Five years old, out on that stage next to her dad, waving at a stadium full of Chicago Bears fans who were still standing there cheering for him.

Fourteen years of practice squads and backup jobs and new cities and moving trucks.

He said it himself when he signed here. More than knowing how to get hit, he knows how to get back up.

The first NFL game his kids ever got to watch, their dad won it, and he scored three times doing it.

Keenums can do hard things.

For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap

[GG @GarryGates]

The NFL has released footage of the proper technique Chop Robinson should have used to hit Patrick Mahomes.

[Jon Gordon @JonGordon11]

The legend and his legacy.

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

She never called her family to say goodbye. Instead, Sara Low used her final 30 minutes to make sure the FBI knew who attacked America.

Trapped at 30,000 feet with no weapon, 28-year-old flight attendant Sara Low held the only tool that could expose the 9/11 hijackers to the world: 14 numbers memorized in her head.

When terrorists stormed the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 11, chaos erupted in the cabin. Flight attendant Amy Sweeney scrambled to grab an onboard airphone to alert the ground team, but hit a devastating wall - she didn't have a calling card to bypass the system lock.

Without her wallet on hand, Sara stepped forward. She didn't have plastic, but she had clarity. She had memorized her family’s AT&T calling card digits.

Sara handed those numbers to Amy, unlocking a lifeline to the ground.

For the next 20 minutes, Amy stayed on the line with American Airlines flight services in Boston. Because of Sara's calling card, the FBI received its very first concrete intelligence of the day: exact seat numbers of the hijackers, physical descriptions, and their movements in the cabin.

While Amy relayed the critical data, Sara spent her final half-hour moving terrified passengers toward the rear of the plane, shielding them from danger.

Sara had the means to use that airphone. She could have called her parents. She could have said a final goodbye to her sister.

She didn't. She chose to make sure the world would know the truth instead.

True heroism isn't defined by muscle or weapons. It’s defined by presence of mind in the face of impossible terror - and the selfless decision of who that mind chooses to serve.

#archaeohistories

[SNY Giants @SNYGiants]

"I'm not going to tell you who is playing in the game. I'm not going to tell you who is starting, what package we have in, what play we're running.

I'm not going to tell you any of that.

So we can make it great and have a great press conference, or we can make it uncomfortable.

I'm not going to tell you because what you know, the Cowboys know, and every other team knows. That's not in the competitive interest of our football team.

I think you can respect that."

- John Harbaugh

[Josh Chambers @JoshChambers]

Kurt Warner says he was making $5.50/hour stocking grocery store shelves, living on food stamps, but refused to let other people decide he couldn’t play

“I was actually living with Brenda and her parents and her two kids because I didn’t have any money to my name. I ended up finding a job stocking shelves. I would go in about 10:30 at night and work until about 5:30 in the morning, come home, sleep for a couple hours, watch the kids all day long, work out in the afternoon, Brenda and I would have a little dinner together, and then back to work again. That was the life.”

“She was on food stamps from before, and me making $5.50 an hour. There was never a time where I got a chance to play and I didn’t play well. Of all the things when people say, ‘What kept you going?’, that was it.”

“Until somebody shows me that I can’t play, I can’t give up on this dream. Because all I know is that when I do get that opportunity, I excel.”

“In the back of my mind I’m thinking, ‘I am so much better than Arena Football.’ While I’m working for $5.50 an hour in a grocery store, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m so much better than Arena Football.’”

“But I fell in love with the game again. I had a bunch of guys that didn’t care how much money they made, didn’t care what the accommodations were, probably were never going to play in the NFL, they just loved playing football.”

[Josh Chambers @JoshChambers]

Drew Brees reveals that days before the Saints’ first game back in the Superdome after Katrina, Sean Payton turned off every light in the stadium and showed the team footage of what the city of New Orleans had endured, and then said it’s only special if they win

“That was really the moment where it was sending a message to our fans and the world that New Orleans was going to come back stronger than ever. A lot of that team was new. We hadn’t stepped foot in the Superdome. Sean recognized that Monday night was going to be super emotional, so he was like, ‘Man, I’ve got to get the guys in the building so they can feel it a little bit before we just step foot in there Monday night.’”

“So Saturday night, we go in there and practice. It’s crisp, it’s fast, and then he brings us up afterward and just kills the lights in the whole Dome. Pitch black.”

“All of a sudden, up on the Jumbotron, he plays a piece of the Spike Lee documentary about Katrina. It was a recognition of what happened in this city, what this fan base had been through, what this building represented, and what we were about to embark on Monday night.”

“Bro, not a dry eye in the house. Everybody’s crying. Then the lights come up, we’re all looking at each other, and he gets up there and says, ‘I don’t need to tell you what this game on Monday night means to these people and how special it’s going to be, but it’s only special if you win.’”

“And that was it. That’s all you need. It wasn’t a feeling of pressure, it was like, man, we’ve got a responsibility. We were brought here for this. This is what we can do. This is our contribution. Let’s go freaking win for these people.”

“To me, that’s a sign of a great head coach. He identified what needed to be said in the moment and touched every guy. One of his great talents is being able to block out all that noise and narrow it down to, ‘Man, this is all I want you thinking about.’”

[KMOV @KMOV]

Nearly 8,000 flags now stand on Art Hill in Forest Park, honoring the service members and first responders who died on and after September 11, 2001. https://t.co/iOIUA8Y50y

[Hoop Herald @TheHoopHerald]

This is so freaking good

Never heard it put like this

“My job is to be opposite the moment”

[The Bible @The__Bible7]

Matthew 19:26

[Frank Cusumano @Frank_Cusumano]

The attendance for the practice rounds and the first 2 rounds of the BMW championship is over 73,000. This Saturday crowd is insane. Maybe over 40,000. Could they get to 150,000 total? Yeah, we are just baseball town Stan.

[St. Louis Cardinals @Cardinals]

It takes a village ❤️

More than 30 family and friends were waiting to celebrate with Joshua Báez after his historic MLB debut!

[St. Louis Cardinals @Cardinals]

HOME RUN DERBY CHAMPION!

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

Jalen Brunson. NBA Champion. Finals MVP.

Hard work pays off 🏆

[St. Louis Cardinals @Cardinals]

We are pleased to inform you that LARS NOOTBAAR IS BACK!

[Mike Simpson @MSimp80]

@A_kamara6 @camjordan94 That’s fantastic AK !

[Cam Jordan @camjordan94]

Breezy first ballot!!!

[Sean Payton @SeanPayton]

He came when most were leaving...Set a bar so high for all of us....He lead immediately....
He's OUR 1st Ballot HOF QB!
Congratulations Drew Brees. Also, Congratulations to Your wife Brittany, Baylen, Bowen, Callen and Rylen. It was an honor to have coached you.

[Mike Simpson @MSimp80]

Congratulations @drewbrees , the GOAT!