Philip Rivers has never been quick on his feet, but he can make quick decisions. That’s what made him such an outstanding NFL quarterback, and it’s part of the reason he’s a Hall of Fame semifinalist.
So it’s not surprising that, even at 44 and a grandfather, he didn’t linger long when the Indianapolis Colts called to take his temperature on coming back to play quarterback for them.
Rivers was at home in Alabama on Sunday night when he got a call from Colts coach Shane Steichen and general manager Chris Ballard. They had just lost starting quarterback Daniel Jones to a torn Achilles tendon, and rookie backup Riley Leonard suffered an undisclosed knee injury in relief.
“We said, ‘What do you think?’” Steichen said Wednesday of phoning Rivers, the Chargers great who finished his career with the Colts. “He said, ‘Heck yeah, I’m interested. Heck yeah.’ So he slept on it and then we called him back Monday morning and he said, ‘I need to get up there and throw in that building. Start moving around.’”
The quarterback, five years removed from his last game, threw at the Colts facility Monday and Tuesday then went back to his hotel to think it over. When Steichen and Ballard called again, Rivers — in true Philip Rivers style — said, “Dag-gummit, let’s freaking go.”
Said Steichen, Rivers’ onetime quarterbacks coach and later offensive coordinator with the Chargers: “He’s one of the most passionate players I’ve ever been around. The obsession for the game is off the charts.”
Amazingly, there’s a chance he could start Sunday at Seattle. Steichen wanted to get a good look at him in practice Wednesday but conceded that sending him out on the field is a possibility.
NFL quarterbacks who have played in their 40s is an exceedingly small club, and includes George Blanda, Tom Brady, Brett Favre, Steve DeBerg, Vinny Testaverde, Warren Moon, Drew Brees, Matt Hasselbeck — currently Aaron Rodgers — and a handful of others.
Hasselbeck was 40 in 2015, his final season with the Colts. His body felt good. He could still throw. He was having fun, and his team was 4-0 with him as the starter.
“Then I got hurt,” he said. “I separated a couple ribs. I got hit in the jaw so hard I sprained my jawbone and lost hearing in my ear. I got sick. … I got beat up, and it wasn’t anywhere near as fun. I separated my shoulder. It was brutal.”
He decided that was it. He retired and went to work for ESPN. He had outlasted the rest of his draft class. His playing days were over.
Did he want to play again?
“That first year out, no chance,” he said. “There was no dollar number that would have been a yes.”
Football, though, is a seductive siren. He had been out a year and was feeling great. Training camps came around and he felt that familiar urge to step back onto the field. That stuff doesn’t go away easily.
“Years two, three and four away from it — maybe even five — I was like, ‘Hey, yeah, I could … if I didn’t have to do OTAs and minicamp and all the stuff. I could see it,’” Hasselbeck said.
So he understands the perspective of Rivers, who last played in 2020.
“You’re coaching high school football,” Hasselbeck said. “You’re throwing footballs all day long. Your arm feels great. You haven’t been running and stopping and starting, but that’s never been part of his game anyway. So who knows? On paper, it kind of makes sense.”
Certainly makes sense to Rivers, who watches both the Colts and Chargers religiously every week, and uses the same plays and terminology as coach of St. Michael Catholic High in Fairhope, Ala., as he used in Indianapolis.
“It’s not like I just shut down football and I’m trying to pick it back up,” Rivers said. “Yeah, it’s a physical game and it’s fast, and dudes are big and fast just like they were, … [But] there’s something about being back in this building that just feels right.”
Rivers and his wife, Tiffany, have seven daughters and three sons, including Gunner, a junior at St. Michael and four-star quarterback prospect. Life is plenty busy as it is. So the call to come back to playing has rippled through the family.
“My wife’s been my biggest fan the whole time I played,” he said. “She’s nervous about the physical aspect of it, as you’d expect any wife to be.
“For 250 games, or whatever it was, that was a risk, whether you’re 24 and in the best shape of your life, or 44 and not so sure. Anything can happen. That’s never been a concern of mine.
“My younger children are excited because they don’t remember dad playing. My six-year-old actually asked me four months ago, ‘Dad, why don’t you play anymore?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, the best you’re gonna get is me coaching on the sideline.’
‘My boys are fired up but a little nervous. ‘Dad, do you think you can do it?’ My older girls are excited too. They remember being 12 or 16 going to the ballgame, and now they’re grown adults and married. It’s been a whirlwind 24 hours.”
There’s a difference between being in good shape in the regular world and being in NFL shape.
“For me, looking at years where I stayed healthy the whole season, I had an offseason of lifting heavy, dead lifting, power cleaning, doing a lot of that kind of stuff,” Hasselbeck said. “Not necessarily the corporate workout, when you’re riding the Peloton or something.
“I think the bigger part of it is, you’re also a dad. My kids were playing travel AAU ball, travel hockey, travel lacrosse, and I was also trying to compete to be one of the best in the world at quarterback. It’s hard to balance all that stuff.
“I don’t know if it’s just the age, but it’s the responsibilities that come with the age that made it more difficult than when my kids were taking naps and going to bed at 7:30 every night. It just gets a little different, a different challenge. Like, I was doing math homework instead of, say, studying the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense. I was literally helping my kid do middle-school math.”
Even so, Hasselbeck can envision Rivers — who never relied on his mobility — having success.
“People think quarterbacking is about the stuff you see in a quarterback challenge or an Elite 11 competition,” Hasselbeck said. “That’s not what quarterbacking mostly is. It can be if that’s the way you want to go, but it’s not really about that.
“It’s about being the coach on the field. It’s about getting us into the right play, or getting us out of the wrong play. It’s about giving your guys up front an advantage on every run opportunity. And then it’s also, ‘Hey, you want to play us man-to-man, one-on-one, I’m enough of a sniper as a passer to make you pay for it.’”
Rivers, meanwhile, is pinching himself.
“Certainly, I wasn’t hanging on any hope of playing again. I thought that ship had sailed,” he said. “But something about it excited me. The door opens and you can either walk through it or run from it.”
He’s never considered himself a runner.
The post ‘Let’s freaking go’: Philip Rivers on coming out of retirement to join Colts appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
