Gary Keithley (born January 11, 1951) is a former professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

and punter in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

. Playing for the

St. Louis Cardinals The St. Louis Cardinals are an American professional baseball team based in St. Louis. The Cardinals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Since the 2006 season, the Cardinals hav ...

primarily as a backup to Jim Hart, he had a 0.0 passer rating in each of his first two career starts in 1973, the only quarterback in NFL history to do this in back-to-back games. Despite the dubious statistic, Keithley won in his first start against the

Atlanta Falcons The Atlanta Falcons are a professional American football team based in Atlanta. The Falcons compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The Falcons joined th ...

, a 32–10 victory in which he completed just two of ten passes for nine yards and an interception that was returned for a touchdown. The following year, Keithley lost his backup role to

Dennis Shaw Dennis Wendell Shaw (born March 3, 1947) is a former American football quarterback in the National Football League for the Buffalo Bills, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, and the Kansas City Chiefs. College career Shaw played college foot ...

, who played for Cardinals head coach

Don Coryell Donald David Coryell (October 17, 1924 – July 1, 2010) was an American football coach, who coached in the National Football League (NFL) first with the St. Louis Cardinals from 1973 to 1977 and then the San Diego Chargers from 1978 to 1986. W ...

in college, while his punting duties were reassigned to rookie punter Hal Roberts. He then spent the off-season with the

Seattle Seahawks The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 as ...

before the

1976 NFL season The 1976 NFL season was the 57th regular season of the National Football League. The league expanded to 28 teams with the addition of Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This fulfilled one of the conditions agreed to in 1966 for the 1 ...

but did not make the roster. He was the backup quarterback of the

BC Lions The BC Lions are a professional Canadian football team based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Lions compete in the West Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL), and play their home games at BC Place. The Lions played their first season ...

in 1977 and 1978.

References

1951 births Living people People from Alvin, Texas Players of American football from Texas American football quarterbacks Canadian football quarterbacks American players of Canadian football UTEP Miners football players St. Louis Cardinals (football) players BC Lions players {{quarterback-1950s-stub