The last weeks of November 2024 were a special time for Philip Rivers. Those were the days when Rivers became a grandfather for the first time.
The last weeks of December 2025 will also be a special time for Rivers. These are the days in which he, 44 years old, father of ten children and grandfather of a grandson since November 2024, is making his comeback in the National Football League (NFL). Sounds crazy. It is too.
“I had a lot of fun”
Exactly 1,800 days since his last NFL game, almost five years after his actual career ended, the quarterback wore the Indianapolis Colts jersey on Sunday in the important game in the fight for the playoffs against the Seattle Seahawks. A week earlier, he had been sitting at home on the couch, thinking about his high school football team, which he has coached for several years, and looking forward to the upcoming holidays with his family. Then the call came from Indianapolis.
He was asked on Sunday night whether he could imagine coming over for a trial training session at very short notice. Rivers, who threw his first pass in the NFL 21 years ago for the San Diego Chargers, who are no longer based in San Diego, could imagine that. Only, he revealed to NFL insider Jay Glazer, he no longer had any sports shoes in his house in Alabama. So he grabbed an old pair from his trophy case, packed his bag and got on the plane.
The trial training on Monday, his birthday, was satisfactory. On Tuesday, the Colts added him to their “practice squad,” a type of training group. On Saturday he was named to the active matchday squad. And then, the day before the game against the Seahawks, Colts coach Shane Steichen, who had worked with Rivers with the Chargers, announced that Rivers would actually lead the team onto the field at quarterback.
“It was incredible. I had a blast,” Rivers said afterwards. At the press conference he was asked what it felt like to be rammed into the ground again by a beefy NFL defender after such a long time. “To be honest, it never bothered me,” he replied. “My wife always says I’m crazy because sometimes over the past three or four years I’ve said to her, ‘Man, I wish I could just throw a ball right now and get knocked down, hard!'”
His wife Tiffany, a high school sweetheart whom Rivers, a devout Catholic, married in 2001, finds this, her husband says, “not normal.” But Rivers says his passion for football never waned. And when the Colts contacted him, in an act of desperation after their original quarterback Daniel Jones tore his Achilles tendon, but the period for player transfers within the league between the teams had already expired, he would not only have thought of his passion for football, but also of his sons.
He wants to be an inspiration to them, three of them, as well as the players on his high school team. An inspiration that it’s not worth running away when you’re faced with challenges. “Of course there are situations in which you doubt,” he said on Sunday, sweaty, with tears in his eyes. “The safe way is always not to do something. And the other is to face a situation.”
The fact that Rivers, who was clearly carrying too much weight for his first appearance back on the biggest football stage possible, made a game-winning mistake seconds before the final whistle when his pass was intercepted by Seahawks defender Coby Bryant, sealing the narrow 16:18 defeat, was just one facet of this almost insane comeback story. Rivers also showed that he can still compete with the league’s best, especially in passing and game management, even though he didn’t always cut a very elegant figure.
“Philip invented this offensive”
That was a good sign for the Colts. A sign that their venture could perhaps have the desired effect after all. Quarterback Jones had previously surprisingly put the team on course for the playoffs, something that only a few experts had believed he could do before the season. But because Jones will be out for six months, replacement Anthony Richardson has been out injured for weeks and third quarterback Riley Leonard, who is two months younger than Rivers’ eldest daughter, is suffering from knee problems, the responsibility for the last three games of the season probably lies entirely with the returnee Rivers. After three defeats in a row, the Colts are under a lot of pressure.
The fact that they even thought of Rivers in Indianapolis when they were thinking about who could replace Jones at the playmaking position has to do with a shared past. Rivers played the longest part of his NFL career for the Chargers, between 2004 and 2019 he led the team to the playoffs six times and to the semifinals once, in which he was on the field despite a torn cruciate ligament and meniscus and lost to the New England Patriots with Tom Brady. In 2020, however, he wore the Colts jersey for one season, his last in the NFL for the time being.
At that time, he and his coaches in Indianapolis established a style of play for the offense that head coach Steichen still practices today: a lot of movement in the positions, intensive involvement of the running backs, balanced throws adapted to the behavior of the opposing defense. Rivers knows this system, which he also has his high school team play, so there were hardly any problems adapting in this regard. “At first I thought it was kind of funny,” receiver Michael Pittman Jr. said of Rivers’ signing. “But then I thought about it and said to myself, ‘You know what, Philip invented this offense. This is the offense he played.'” So if the team is looking for a player who can still make the Colts’ playoff dream come true, “it’s him.”
Rivers remained cautious after his performance against the Seahawks. He will continue to work with the team to get better. But one thing is already certain: Rivers could actually have been inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame next year. After his comeback, according to the league’s rules, he would have to wait another five years. At least. Five years after the end of his career.
