Philip Rivers Gets Some Credit

Two days ago, Robert Mays of Grantland wrote an article on the best quarterback of the 2004 draft class. His pick was not the two-time Super Bowl Champions Eli Manning or Ben Roethlisberger but rather former NC State star Philip Rivers, who was drafted between the two of them and has no Super Bowl rings. Here are five things I learned from reading Mays’ article.

“Sometimes, when it’s starting to get away from you a little bit, as it was those previous years, you’re fighting and clawing and trying to find a way to get it going, and you try to do too much…There were times when I was trying to make something out of nothing. My intentions were good. My intentions were right. But it doesn’t work that way.” – Philip Rivers

1.New Chargers coach Mike McCoy modified the vocabulary of his offense to fit what the Chargers were used to.

This was an interesting phenomenon as even Rivers admitted in the article. How common it is for a coach to come in and say that his way was the highway, the old regime is dead and everything that went with it is dead too. This caused me to respect McCoy more as a coach, since my only previous experience with McCoy was when he was an assistant with the Panthers. Given John Fox’s style of football, it was hard to get a handle on how good his offensive coordinators might be. Adding Peyton Manning in Denver did not clear up the situation.

2.Rivers almost completed 70% of his passes last year

When the Giants introduced their new offense, they said that Eli Manning could be a 70% passer in it. This was roundly criticized by observers, because that mark had only been reached four times in the recent history of the NFL. Drew Brees had done it. How surprising it was to learn that Rivers had gotten to 69.5% in McCoy’s offense last year despite never having thrown for better than 66% in any year previous.

3.Rivers is a better fantasy quarterback than Manning and Roethlisberger
I guess I would have figured this out if I had played more fantasy, but Rivers has produced at a higher statistical level than either of his two fellow draftees. This was particularly true during the Tomlinson era when the Chargers had a stacked offense and Rivers was among the top 5 quarterbacks in the league in production.

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4.A bad year for Rivers is pretty good

In this case, the article was talking about 2011 where Rivers threw for 20 interceptions. He also threw for 27 touchdowns that season with 4,624 passing yards. As the article sad, a lot of guys would take those numbers

5.Rivers returned to form in 2013 by being patient

Rivers admitted to try to make things happen and going for things that were not there because he thought he needed to do that. As he said, “Sometimes, when it’s starting to get away from you a little bit, as it was those previous years, you’re fighting and clawing and trying to find a way to get it going, and you try to do too much…There were times when I was trying to make something out of nothing. My intentions were good. My intentions were right. But it doesn’t work that way.” With the new offense, Rivers was able to focus on completions and taking what defenses gave him. He returned to the Pro Bowl last year.

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