Despite his postseason woes, he has more playoff wins than Matt Ryan or Carson Palmer. He averaged more wins per season than Eli Manning and had more Pro Bowl invites (meaningless, sure, but they *do* matter to voters) than Ben Roethlisberger. While Rivers can’t stack up to the resumes of Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, or Tom Brady, you can make the case he’s the fourth-best quarterback of the decade. This is where I get sad you can’t paste a spreadsheet into Substack.Īnyway, only 13 passers drafted in that 10-year span went on to start for at least a decade. Let’s see how he stacks up against the other quarterbacks drafted in the 2000s who went on to play 10+ seasons as a starter:Ĭlick to embiggen. This makes it difficult to compare his stats to guys who may have called it a career only a few years before Rivers exploded onto the scene.įor example, Rivers - the greatest quarterback to never play a Super Bowl - has a passer rating nearly 10 points higher than the greatest quarterback to never win one, Dan Marino.įortunately, there are a ton of elite quarterbacks who are Hall of Fame bound that Rivers *can* be compared to. That set the stage for passing records to be obliterated, and the Chargers quarterback rode that rising tide to gaudy numbers. Rivers’ entire starting career came after the league enforced the “Ty Law Rule,” which severely limited how aggressive defensive backs could be in coverage. It’s undeniable Phil was a product of his era. We’re really gonna give that much credit to a guy who was arguably Drew Bledsoe, born 10 years later? I mean, at least Bledsoe took a flawed Patriots team to a Super Bowl. Time after time, Rivers wasn’t the one pointing a loaded gun at his team’s metaphorical foot in New England. And, because Nate Kaeding is tragedy taking human form and putting on shoulder pads, his kick was both wide right and short.Ĭould Rivers have been better? Sure! But a better supporting cast or head coach - remember, he toiled under Turner and Marty Schottenheimer in the salad days of his career - would have been enough to paper over his postseason mistakes. That’s when his Chargers saw an eight-point lead evaporate in the final eight minutes thanks to, well, just about the most unlikely fourth-and-five conversion in NFL history:Įven then, Rivers led his timeout-less team 39 yards in three plays (and two clock-stopping spikes) in the final 1:05 to line up a potential game-tying 54-yard field goal with eight seconds to play (yeah, the clock management wasn’t great). Then there’s the game that derailed his best regular season, a 14-2 sprint that finished without a single postseason win. That same game, the Chargers punted the ball away trailing 21-12 in the fourth quarter with 9:21 to play and never saw the ball again. Rivers drove his team inside the Patriots’ 10-yard line three times and came away with nine points as head coach Norv Turner opted for field goal after field goal. Somehow, these aren’t even his most painful playoff exits! He played the 2008 AFC Championship Game - his only trip to the NFL’s final four - on a partially torn ACL only to come away with a heartbreaking loss. A 9-7 2013 led to a Wild Card game where Rivers outplayed Peyton Manning but was undone by an offensive line that allowed him to be sacked four times (four more times than Manning, notably) and limited San Diego’s running backs to 55 yards on 15 carries. There’s a very real argument about the failures of those around him in some of those playoff defeats.Ī 13-3 season in 2009 was cut short in a playoff loss to the Jets (the JETS!) in which the Chargers committed 10 penalties and Nate Kaeding missed field goals of 57, 40, and 36 yards in a 17-14 game. And though his postseason passer rating was roughly 10 points lower than his regular season mark, that’s not especially unusual for a QB facing tougher defenses in January and February Tom Brady’s postseason rating is seven points lower than his Weeks 1-17 average. In 15 seasons as a starter, the goofball quarterback made it beyond the Divisional Round of the AFC playoffs exactly once. That’s the shadow that will chase Rivers into retirement. I can think of one thing those six guys have in common that Rivers absolutely does not. His longevity and his production scream “Canton.” Pro Football Reference’s Hall of Fame monitor rates his career as more worthy of enshrinement than quarterbacks like Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Joe Namath, Troy Aikman, and Kurt Warner.
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