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On December 15th in the NFL, the American football championship, Philip Rivers returned to play in the role of quarterback. Rivers is 44 years old, has been a grandfather for a few months and, above all, he hadn’t played in the NFL for exactly 1,800 days, almost five years. He was recalled by the Indianapolis Colts, the team where he played his last game in January 2021.
The Colts are trying to qualify for the playoffs and with a few games to go in the championship they are left practically without a quarterback, the most decisive role in American football. They lost the first game they played with Rivers after his return, but just barely. And already the next day their coach said that Rivers will also play the next one, on December 23 against the San Francisco 49ers, and probably also the next two, the last ones before the playoffs. The Colts are coming off a four-game losing streak and are at 8 wins and 6 losses this season. Getting to the playoffs, which they have missed since Rivers was still on the team, is difficult but not impossible.
The Colts’ season started well, with 8 wins in the first 10 games. Then came the injuries of his quarterbacks: the offensive directors, on whose decisions and actions a large part of a team’s success depends. First sI ruptured my Achilles tendon owner Daniel Jones. The designated replacement, the promising Anthony Richardson, has been unavailable since October due to a fracture of the orbital bone (which he got while warming up in the locker room with an elastic band), and another quarterback on the team, Riley Leonard, was also injured recently. Only one quarterback remained, Brett Rypien, who at 29 years old played only 10 games in the NFL, and was evidently not considered reliable enough. To the point that the Colts preferred a 44-year-old former player, who hadn’t played since before he turned 40.
On the Wall Street JournalJason Gay he wrote: «When I heard about Rivers’ return to the NFL, my first thought was, wow, what an exciting story. Actually, no, it’s a lie. My first thought was: wow, this is a terrible idea.”
Indeed, before his first game in five years, there were many questions about how well he could handle the pace, pressure and punch of the NFL. But there were also reasons to think he could have done well, as he actually did: with 18 successful passes out of 27 attempted and one that led to a touchdown.
Although in far from great physical shape, Rivers knew the team’s plans. The Colts’ coach is in fact forty-year-old Shane Steichen, and Rivers and Steichen had been together for eight years – when Steichen was the offensive coach – at the Los Angeles Chargers, the team where Rivers played for almost his entire career. Even after Rivers’ move to the Colts and his retirement, he and Steichen remained friends. They often heard each other and Rivers, as coach of the high school teams of some of his 10 children, uses schemes very similar to those chosen by Steichen for the Colts.
Rivers on Dec. 14 against the Seattle Seahawks (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Rivers he said these are his thoughts after seeing the injury of starting quarterback Daniel Jones on TV: «I felt very sorry for Daniel, but I must admit that I also thought “well, maybe Shane will call me now”». That’s exactly how it went: within a week the Colts called Rivers, put him on trial for a couple of days and then decided to make him their new starting quarterback.
Rivers nel 2003 (Cy Cyr/WireImage)
In playing his 18th NFL season at age 44, Rivers became the oldest active player in the league. But there are still age records that he didn’t beat: the very strong quarterback Tom Brady played until he was 45 and George Blanda played in the NFL, also as a quarterback, until he was 48 (he debuted in 1949 and played until 1976).
Sempre in NFL, it’s already happened even that grandparents played. Although difficult and subject to strong collisions with opponents, the job of the quarterback has a lot to do with experience, and it is not unusual for some of them to play beyond the age of forty. Even more than age, in Rivers’ case the peculiar thing is in fact his return almost five years after retirement.
Rivers was among the better and more constant NFL players: in his first 17 seasons his passes covered over 63 thousand yards (equal to approximately 58 kilometers) and led to 421 touchdowns. However, he has never played in a Super Bowl and is considered one of the best quarterbacks to never have done so.
