Rivers bolts into the master class
The Chargers quarterback is a true generational talent, Super Bowl ring or not
In 2006, the San Diego Chargers had a conundrum. Their starting quarterback from the previous season was a 27-yearold free agent who was coming back from a severe shoulder injury. While they had gone 21-11over the previous two seasons, they had not won a playoff game since 1994, and they had a firstround pick from the 2004 draft on the bench, ready to step in as a starter.
The player they chose to let go, Drew Brees, went on to become the most productive passer in NFL history. Yet 12 seasons later it’s fairly easy, after considering the salary and risk involved in the situation, to make the argument that the Chargers made the right call in letting him leave.
That’s the strange reality of Philip Rivers, who replaced Brees, established himself as a franchise quarterback, and yet has been largely overlooked ever since in the discussions of the game’s best quarterbacks, despite a regular-season resumé that stands out even amid today’s bloated passing numbers. And whether it is fair to him or not, his lack of a Super Bowl victory is no small factor in that disregard.
So as he heads into the playoffs for the sixth time — his Chargers (now in Los Angeles) will play at the Baltimore Ravens in the wild-card round today — Rivers is once again having his worth debated.
Rivers, who has not missed a start since being named the Chargers’ starter, has had a career that might not quite match up to Brees’, but comes much closer than most would think — especially once you factor in the benefit of Brees having played half his games in the
passer-friendly Superdome in New Orleans. And while he may not have as high of a profile as two other big-name quarterbacks taken in the 2004 draft — Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger — the case can be made that he was better than either of his famous peers in the regular season.
That 2004 draft class can claim a distinction that even the 1983 group of Dan Marino, John Elway and Jim Kelly fame cannot: It had three quarterbacks reach 50,000 career passing yards. It’s a total achieved by just nine quarterbacks, and one-third of them were selected within 11 picks of one another (Manning first, Rivers fourth, Roethlisberger 11th).
In that 2004 group, Rivers leads in touchdowns (374), touchdown percentage (5.3 per cent), adjusted yards per passing attempt (7.7) and passer rating (95.6). He has thrown the fewest interceptions (178) and has the lowest interception percentage (2.5 per cent). But Brees, Manning and Roethlisberger have something Rivers does not: a championship ring. Brees won the 2010 Super Bowl with the Saints while Manning and Roethlisberger have each won a pair of championships.
Rivers himself has tried to play down the validation that would come with finally winning a championship.
“Not that you ever settle,” Rivers told ESPN of pursuing a Super Bowl win. “By no means am I saying I’m settling. It’s not that. It’s just that it’s not going to define happiness for me at the end of the day.”
Ignoring the modern obsession with evaluating players’ legacies almost entirely by championships, Rivers already has a career worthy of celebrating.
He has led the league in touchdowns and he has led the league in interceptions (twice). He has won 11 or more games in four seasons — including this one — and his play once dropped off so severely that when he returned to normal in 2013, he was awarded the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year Award.
There is no perfect statistic to evaluate the total impact of an NFL career, but Pro Fooball-Reference’s attempt at creating one, Approximate Value, rates Rivers at 177, Roethlisberger at 171 and Manning at 150, ranking them eighth, ninth and 16th among quarterbacks in NFL regular-season history.
In all likelihood, Roethlisberger’s superior won-lost record, and his Super Bowl rings, will make him the easiest hall of fame vote of the three. But the debates could rage between Rivers (regular-season success) and Manning (post-season success), with either, or both, being enshrined in Canton once they become eligible.
Before any of that comes to pass, Rivers has unfinished business. At 37, he remains a productive passer, and the team currently around him is one of the most talented he has ever played with. The Chargers have a brutally difficult task this weekend in trying to slow Lamar Jackson and the Ravens — they lost to Baltimore by 22-10 two weeks ago — but even if this is not their year, their roster construction should allow them to compete again in the 2019 season.
And should Rivers never win a Super Bowl, he would still have achieved a level of production and durability that should keep him in the discussion of the game’s best quarterbacks long after he retires. He would simply fall into the category of Fran Tarkenton, Dan Fouts, Marino and Kelly as one the best quarterbacks to have never won a Super Bowl. And there is far worse company a player could keep.