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Philip Rivers signed a one-year contract with the Indianapolis Colts, and beyond that his NFL career is a bit unclear. Rivers was officially named the head football coach at St. Michael Catholic High School in Fairhope, Alabama — pending his eventual retirement.
Rivers was asked what the timeline is, and he offered the “one year at a time” cliche.
“I think it is a one year at a time deal,” he said. “You get to 38 and play as long as I have … I’ve expressed publicly and the Colts have said too they hope it’s more than one year. But we take it one year at a time. I love playing. When that time does end, you will get the same passion and work ethic at this school and community that I’ve poured into my career ...
“I think really where we settled in was: I still love to play. Certainly not coming off my best year, but in a year where I still know I can play at a high level. I did it in spurts. I just didn’t do it consistently enough. And I love it, and, shoot, it was one of those deals where we said, ‘Well, if there’s nothing else out there, then that’ll be our answer.’ We kind of said, ‘Whatever God wants, so if there’s nothing out there, I don’t want to just try to hang on to play. If nothing’s out there, shoot, we’ll start coaching.’”
Rivers has conducted football clinics at St. Michael’s each of the past two summers. He said at the time he knows some people in the area and the school aligned with what he believed in athletically, spiritually, and academically.
Rivers is coming off a 2019 campaign that was not necessarily the worst of his career, but was not a good one by his standards. He joins a Colts team that has some solid weapons, but is arguably worse at the offensive skill positions than last year’s Chargers team. After wide receiver T.Y. Hilton and running back Marlon Mack, it’s a lot of question marks. There’s upside there, and maybe he can avoid the run of bad luck that regularly seemed to hit the Chargers, but we’ll see.
The Colts drafted Jacob Eason and have Jacoby Brissett on the depth chart as they look to the future. We should find out in a hurry how much Rivers still has left in the tank.