Bye Bye Bearcats Seniors: #62 Cory Keebler
By Chris Bains
Another offensive lineman on our goodbye tour, there’s gonna be a lot of them so strap in, is local product Cory Keebler.
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One of the largest players to walk around Clifton, likely shaking the ground as he moved his feet, hails from Lakota East High School in the Northern suburbs. But Keebler came to UC as a slender, lanky 235 lbs tight end. Like most high school players, he didn’t have the body to play the tackle position in college but Butch Jones saw the monster brewing inside him.
Keebler redshirted his freshman year and never sniffed the two-deep until his junior year. During that time the skinny Thunderhawk tight end piled on 60 lbs of weight to develop into the gargantuan Bearcat offensive tackle, ready for a role protecting the quarterback.
As an upperclassman Keebler clocked in at 6’7″, 294 lbs, so Tommy Tuberville and Darren Hiller wisely placed him behind their best left tackle on the depth chart Eric Lefeld. It allowed Keebler to get his feet wet while preparing him for a starting role. As it turned out, a rash of injuries and underperformance from other players jolted him up the depth chart faster than expected. Keebler was thrown into a starting spot for the Bearcats’ Belk Bowl game against the North Carolina Tar Heels.
Come the following offseason he was set up perfectly for a starting role in 2014. Things were going swimmingly for Keebler until it all came crashing down during the Ohio State game. He suffered a torn ACL, a tragic way to end a collegiate career that could have transitioned into the NFL.
It’s unclear how Keebler would have performed during a full 13 games. He seemed fit to dominate on the right side of Cincinnati’s offensive line. But like so many talented players before him, a fluke injury struck him down cold. It was the worst way someone could end his career and was something you wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Unfortunately Keebler will probably be grouped with the likes of Walter Stewart whose promising careers were cut short before they had a chance to thrive.