Sunday’s loss for the Chargers changed the narrative for Peyton Manning in Denver, but exposed a harsh truth for Philip Rivers fanatics. Once again, he was a day late and a dollar short.
Rivers is the ultimate procrastinator. He doesn’t do it on purpose, but the adrenaline rush of the clock winding down seems to be his natural high. He's like a millionaire living paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s why his teams don’t ever come alive until the month of December every single year to make their improbabe playoff push.
The Chargers defense did its job holding the Broncos record-setting offense to 24 points and below 400 yards for the third straight time. No other defense held them below 400 even once this season. Defensive coordinator John Pagano should be a head coach somewhere one day soon. Ken Whisenhunt probably had an interview scheduled via teleconference for Sunday night. It's not like the personnel and the coaching aren't there.
It was Rivers and the offense that waited until there were 13 minutes left on the clock to cram four quarters of work into 13 minutes. If he didn't have a coaching staff to remind him, he'd probably show up in Denver on Monday morning.
He’s the other half of Peyton Manning that we didn’t even know we were looking for. While Manning has had more one-and-dones than John Calipari, Rivers is portrayed as an overachiever in December in January.
At halftime of Sunday’s contest, Rivers had just 20 yards passing and lost 19 yards on sacks. That doesn’t sound like a quarterback who will ever win a Super Bowl. It’s time to face the facts. Rivers will always be looking up to his fellow 2004 NFL Draft peers. He’ll never even be Dan Fouts.
I’m not sure who’s more of a genius between Lane Kiffin’s agent or Rivers’ P.R. reps convincing everyone to gloss over his uneven career. We’re already calling Andy Dalton’s fourth season a pivotal campaign, but Rivers keeps his playoff QBR so close to sea level that it flies beneath the radar.
It’s been painful watching Rivers sling the rock around the field and get a pass for the last decade. Nobody else either wants to say it, but Rivers is benefitting from a west coast bias. An east coast quarterback could never get away with this sort of consistent inconsistency.
The Chargers are too good to be irrelevant. However, their part-time quarterback isn’t intimidating enough to make them serious players in the AFC West. He’s essentially a more likeable Jay Cutler. Let’s not even get started on his shotput throwing motion that Tebow supporters uses as an point for why he can succeed as a starting NFL quarterback.
When your quarterback’s throwing motion is used as the Mendoza line for starting quarterbacks, do you take that as a compliment about his uniqueness or as an insult? It takes someone lighting a fire under his ass for Rivers to leap to action and resemble a genuine playmaker. What exactly is Rivers waiting for?
He’s got two years left on the seven-year, $98.25 million contract he inked back in 2009. Time is ticking Philip. Now’s the time to build off a season for the first time in your career and start cramming 10 years of shoddy production into those final two seasons of his deal.
