Search for Philip Rivers in any statistic, in any sport encyclopedia, online or offline, and you’ll discover something extraordinary. At his career history section, there are only three notices: San Diego Chargers – the name of his team, 2004 – the year when he joined the team, and a small hyphen – the sign of the touchable infinite, the mark that takes place of the year when he should have left the team, a moment that never came.
Nothing more – no other team names, no other years. Just the name of one team and the name of the year when he joined, between them a whole live. Hundreds of games. Emotions, happiness, sadness. Glory, declines, comebacks, and again triumph and glory. Hundreds of proves of love. Loyalty behind imagination. The NFL record for most passing yards during the first 10 games of a season. The NFL second best passing rating record of all times among all quarterbacks with at least 1,500 passing attempts. Three Pro Bowl games (in 2006, 2009 and 2010) and one more selection in 2008 declined because of an injury. The 2010 NFL Alumni Player of the Year award. More than ten fourth quarter comebacks for his team. Infinite talent, doubled with even more dedication, a unique combination of skill, dedication and in-game fantasy – that’s what Philip Rivers gave, not only to San Diego Chargers, but to the football phenomenon as a whole.
Coming to hard facts, let’s see what Philip Rivers done for San Diego Chargers during the seven years he played for the team, following his 2004 Manning-Rivers draft trade. In 2004, he lost the competition for the starting quarterback job to the much more experienced Drew Brees so he could play only two games; even so, Chargers managed to get the AFC West division title that year. The story repeated in 2005, but after Brees shoulder accident from the final game of the season, Philip Rivers managed to get the starting quarterback position, a job he never lost since that moment.
2006 was an exceptional year for the inexperienced Rivers who managed to get a selection for the 2007 Pro Bowl, while also setting some amazing records for his team, like being the first team in history to win four games straight when allowing more than 27 points in each game. The next year (2007) marked not only the second AFC West division title win in a row, but also a few more records for Philip Rivers and Sand Diego Chargers, like the first wins in a playoff game since 1994.
By this time he managed to reach his sportive maturity, so in 2008 he led quite a few of the NFL tops (for example those about pass rating, touch down passes or both adjusted and nonadjustable yards per pass attempt), and, of course, win the AFC West Division title again and also set a new record for Chargers – most touchdown passes in a season (34). The next year (2009) was an equally good one and at the end of it, he got a few more top rankings, but most important, his second Pro Bawl selection.
Despite a rather disappointing performance of his team, Rivers was absolutely brilliant in 2010 – he got the top ranking for passing yards, with an amazing performance of 4,710 yards, and also a second consecutive selection for Pro Bawl.
That’s the amazing story of Philip Rivers, a story that is far away of being finished…
