HOUSTON -- Don't get Case Keenum wrong. The Houston quarterback appreciates the fact that he is on track to set the NCAA career records for total offense, passing yards and touchdown passes. Keenum should take the first of those three Saturday, when the No. 19 Cougars play Marshall.

Case Keenum's knee brace is a reminder of what he's been through in the last 13 months. Thomas Campbell/US Presswire

Keenum, who leads the FBS with 2,333 yards of total offense, needs only 130 yards to break the total offense record of 16,910 set by Timmy Chang of Hawaii (2000-04).

But with all due respect to the 142 seasons of quarterbacks who have played before him, those records aren't the most significant achievement of Keenum's senior season.

Playing is.

Only 13 months ago, in the third game of his fifth year with the Cougars, Keenum tried to correct a mistake and created a bigger one. After throwing an interception to UCLA linebacker Akeem Ayers, Keenum took off after Ayers to make the tackle. Keenum tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.

Yet there Keenum was in the starting lineup on Aug. 30, when Houston defeated UCLA 38-34, and there he has been in every game this season. There is no discernible difference in the quality of his play, either. Keenum, in six games, has completed 170 of 238 passes for 2,309 yards and 17 touchdowns with only two interceptions. His passing efficiency rating of 174.81 is the best of his career by 15 points.

Those aren't even his best statistics. The Cougars, at 6-0, are one of 10 unbeaten teams in the FBS.

"I haven't felt my knee at all the last couple of games," Keenum said. "It's hard to say what percent I'm in. I felt 100 [percent] each time. But I've felt better each game mentally and physically."

The American sports fan takes for granted the miracles of modern medicine. Injuries that used to spell the end of a career now mean an interruption. Rehabilitation that once took two years, if it took at all, is now measured in months.

When the bell rang to open the season, the 6-foot-2, 210-pound Keenum answered it. But that doesn't tell his story. That doesn't capture the 27 pounds he lost after surgery last fall, when the pain medication he needed for his knee left him uninterested in food.