Philip Rivers: Hated For the Wrong Reasons
- Dominic Mucciacito
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Philip Rivers was not loved beyond the tribal borders of Charger fandom.
He was respected as a competitor, yes, but his Byzantine legacy suggests the mediation of a doppelgänger; a fake Rivers who drowns puppies, steals from the offering basket during mass, and never lets one of his nine children win in a game of H-O-R-S-E.
Casual viewers misunderstood Rivers for a variety of reasons: trash talk, exasperating the officials, contraceptive rejectamenta, fumbled snaps, and interceptions all fed, like tributaries, into the Rivers Hate.
If you were to ask the haters they would tell you rooting against him was easy because he came off like such a cry baby. Cry me a Rivers.
He never played in a Super Bowl. He didn't star in any commercials or launch his own line of craft ciders. He never sang backup for Huey Lewis and the News, or, if you prefer, Brad Paisley.
When the Chargers relocated to Los Angeles the idea of Phil going Hollywood was as laughable as the their first attempts to ingratiate themselves to their new digs.
How different would we view Rivers if he had spent seventeen seasons quarterbacking for the Dallas Cowboys? For America's Team. Would we celebrate his folksy charm as a pitchman in an endless rotation of commercials?
Would Dadgummit be a household word?
In Dallas, Rivers' patented gun-slinging, trash talkin', homespun Southern propriety would stoke the embers of nostalgia in the same way Roy Rodgers films must when they pop up on Turner Classic Movies.
Why deny that that idyllic goodness, inherent to Philip Rivers, whether real or imagined, evokes the way Americans want to be regarded?
He is the boy scout accepting a plate of cookies; blushing uncomfortably in the neighbor's praise because, after all, he would have rescued her cat out of the tree anyway—because it was the right thing to do. Gaaaaaaw-lee!
Perhaps because we are inundated by negative energies and apocalyptic prophecies (the siren's lull of doom-scrolling), the temptation then, is to aggrandize the minutia.
The sky is always falling.
This exercise in hand wringing takes place perpetually in sports. Player empowerment. Tanking. Television contracts. Fan violence. Madden rankings. Hold outs. Hold ins. Kneeling.
In the most idealized sense, sports should serve to educate us on how to cope with both winning and losing, without becoming antisocial. They are games, after all. Though it has become hard to tell sometimes.
As a functional barometer for gauging societal anxieties, sportsmanship, and spectator etiquette, have been launching think pieces since we started charging admission.
Surely those first Olympics were followed by a stringent oratory on how the Mycenaean contingent overindulged in their wine sacks before sleeping it off under a parapet reserved for olive and fig merchants who lost thousands of drachmae when forced to relocate without notice.
A few years ago former Chargers receiver Keenan Allen praised Justin Herbert for staying after practice to continue to throwing routes. When reporters asked Allen why he was chuckling to himself he said, "Philip never stayed after a practice to throw the ball."
Allen was being honest, but you can already see how the internet would transform that small praise into clickbait. Keenan Allen Has Scalding Admission About Philip Rivers.
You can't even give someone a compliment without throwing collateral shade.
Culturally partitioned lines are everywhere these days—even amongst our own fan base. We see the world through a strange relationship of how much, or how little, anger a subject will invoke. Worse still, the algorithm rewards the hyperbolic.
The uglier an exchange becomes the more entertaining to devour. Going viral is last remaining communal dream.
I don't know if Philip Rivers is actually polarizing or not, but Chargers fans would agree that he was certainly misunderstood. The Rivers Hate mystifies us; our tribe bristles at the disrespect to this day.
For Charger fans, the questioning of his Hall of Fame candidacy is moot. What interests me more are the lies we've told ourselves to fuel our grievances.
A Philip Rivers caricature was created. One that deviated from the classical portrait of a quarterback: stoicism, dignified airs, and the general appearance of having been there before.
The idea of being so wrong in their attempts to quantify leadership through personality reminds me of another quarterback maligned for not fitting into the mold, but there will be plenty of time to examine him at a later date.
"When I got in the National Football League I hated the guy." said Von Miller, who began his career with the Denver Broncos. "I thought he cried too much."
Looking back, the public caricature probably stems from a December 24th game against the Denver Broncos in 2007. Played on a Monday night before a national audience, the game did not make for compelling television.
The viral moment that stuck in the collective memory was Philip sending some charitable holiday wishes across the field to the Broncos after they failed to convert on a 4th-down late in the game.
No sideline microphones captured the exchange, so viewers were left to fill in the blanks themselves.
Both Rivers and Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler were relative unknowns; young, small market quarterbacks playing second fiddle to their dominant run schemes. The trash talk wasn't isolated to the two signal callers, but the broadcast cameras and crew did their best to frame it as the arrival of some petulant rivalry.
The league already had Brady versus Manning, but Rivers v. Cutler was a seedling that ESPN could water and grow. Marketers love rivalries.
"There are some clips I look at and shake my head," Rivers told Eric Smith of Chargers.com this week. “Some are a little bit embarrassing and some where I go, 'Dang, that was a lot of fun. I was having a blast.' But knowing who I am, I know I was having a blast. Is there an edginess to it? Are you trying to get under the skin of the opponent? Of course.”
"But it was just a lot of fun and again, it's in the backyard. It's nothing I wouldn't have said to my brother when we were arguing about something playing when we were kids," Rivers continued.
Devoutly Catholic, Rivers was never one to indulge in the profane vernacular that makes up most NFL confabulation. Chargers fans know this.
Even in his most heated moments, Phil's curses were composed of: Dadgummits! Goooollys! Deng its! and good old-fashioned rear end whuppins.
But you couldn’t know that from your living room. All you saw was the quarterback running his mouth and waving with his hand.
"It was the best thing about Phil. His trash talking was Hall of Fame worthy!" said former Chargers receiver Kassim Osgood.
So why do so many people still misunderstand Rivers?
Is it just a numbers game and the Chargers are always going to come up short? Why is anger, hatred, angst, animus the domineering way of fandom.
No compromise seems permissible. The rigidity of absolute fandom does not allow for nuance, or dialogue, and neither do sports. Football, like war, is a zero-sum game. Either they make the kick, or they miss it. If my team wins, someone else's is a loser.
Both sides play the victim. Both sides think the officiating was slanted against them. Even the Chiefs try to play the “nobody believed in us” card.
In their way, your tribe makes accountability and reason obsolete.
Perhaps things would be different if the team had won, or played in a Super Bowl. Tragically the Chargers brass gave Rivers a formidable offensive line as often as George R.R. Martin finished a novel.
Running for his life would have been a recurring theme if running and Rivers were not so antithetical. Philip Rivers moved slower than coastal erosion when he was still in his twenties.
On the occasion of being flushed from the pocket, hemmed in by both the sideline and his genetic aversion to sprinting, Philip Rivers would throw the ball away as often as not. Sure, he could extend a play by ambling horizontally away from a collapsing pocket, but he didn't strike fear in the defense when he broke contain.
Any defensive coordinator worth his salt would rather take his chances with Rivers on the move than let him stand tall to survey the field and pepper them with that rifle quick sidearm delivery.
If his bevy of receivers were a buffet— blanketed by coverage after a complete read of his progression —then Rivers on the move was reduced to a raver at 4 A.M. on a quest for gas station burritos.
Most of the time he would toss it in the dirt or out of bounds to live to fight another down, but the inner gunslinger was always there; waiting for the opportunity to shoot the antenna off of a cricket. For better or worse.
Who else would try to play in a championship game on one leg?
When Rivers injured his knee in 2008 against Indianapolis in a Divisional Playoff game, it should have ended his season—and the Chargers.
As Rivers jumped to pass over the hulk of his left tackle Marcus McNeil, his right knee gave out.
Rivers had just thrown a 56 yard touchdown pass to Darren Sproles to take a 21-17 lead that ended the third quarter. The artificial surface of the RCA Dome claimed one final victim in what would be the last football game ever played there. (LaDainian Tomlinson injured his knee in the first half and was reduced from playing the lead to a helmet-less spectator.)
The recovery from an ACL tear takes six to nine months after a reconstructive surgery.
You can see him talking to the Colts fans on his way to the locker room as the game rages on without him. Is it more crass to jeer at an injured player leaving the field or for that player to respond to it?
The sight of the opposing quarterback leaving a playoff game inflated the Colts’ crowd overconfidence, and they let Rivers know. CBS cameras caught the QB giving those partisans an Alabama impersonation of the Terminator.
'Aaaawll be back.'
The Chargers didn't risk putting him back into the game that day. Backup Billy Volek finished the game, scoring on a one yard touchdown to seal the game which sent the team to the AFC Championship to face the 17-0 New England Patriots.*
With a week to recover Rivers would need a miracle if he had any hopes of playing for a chance to go to the Super Bowl.
The faithful servant would limp into Foxborough after a knee scope to do battle with Patriots on guile and guts.
God didn't graft a new ligament onto his wobbly knee.
That would have been too easy. God has bigger problems.
Quietly Rivers had the surgery to remove loose cartilage; a full repair of the ligament would have to wait.
Endeavoring to keep the inflammation from crippling him, Rivers iced it around the clock. He threw on a bulky brace, and he kept his mouth shut.
For a guy with a reputation for talking too much, he never drew any attention to himself off the field. Bolo ties excluded.
As it turns out, ACLs are overrated. Playing on one leg did not rob Rivers of any of his speed. You would have to have speed to begin with.
On one leg he threw for more yards and one less interception than Brady did. The Chargers lost the game, but Rivers won a measure of respect. The Bolts had themselves a gamer; someone who would have to be carried off on his shield before giving quarter.
Rivers never missed a game. Never. His Ironman streak of 240 consecutive starts over the course of his 17 year NFL career began on September 11, 2006.
As to that “rivalry” with Jay Cutler? Faced with less of a handicap, Cutler chose to ride a stationary bike with the Super Bowl at stake three years later. The two signal callers were ships passing in opposite directions.
Still, the perception of petulance lingered and colored a forty-year exodus spent wandering the desert; never to see the promised land. Or was that Moses?
Speaking of, was is fealty that kept Moses from lifting that Lombardi trophy? How could someone so devout and pious be on the receiving end of so many bad bounces? So many season-ending injuries to teammates. So many missed kicks in January. So many last minute loses. So many left tackles masquerading as matadors.
Part of what made Chargers backers so insular of their quarterback was a national misconception that Rivers was some kind of asshole.
Rivers the jackass couldn't be further from reality. But nature abhors a vacuum. If you don't establish a narrative, or a brand, then the echo chamber fills it with burlesque.
Rivers gave no glimpses into his private life which resulted in castigating punchlines every time his wife Tiffany conceived. The oddity of the Rivers Clan; high school sweethearts married in college and happily raising nine** children, was as foreign of a concept to contemporary Americans as Sibylline oracles, or corporate tax law.
And if nature abhors a vacuum, then snark abhors a healthy marriage.
Americans find it easier to relate to the pitchmen swilling for beer companies and credit cards.
Think of Tony Romo’s frat boy charm school; trying to make dick jokes during a broadcast. Think about Peyton and Eli Manning selling a practiced pax-Americana innocence; the rubes passing you the mashed potatoes and helping you put down a three-legged parlay at the sportsbook.
Baker Mayfield did more corporate sponsorship in four years in Cleveland than Phil Rivers has in the last twenty! Dadgummit!
And now I'm getting angry all over again. You see how easily we lapse into tribalism?
This article was originally published in September, 2023. It is made available for free to celebrate the announcement that Rivers will retire as a Charger.
*Experts considered the 2007 Patriots the greatest team of all time. The weight of their inevitability as conquerors had been gaining momentum for months. Fans and commentators relished in their proximity to history. This was a supposedly a team that you would tell your grandchildren about.
**The Rivers family are expecting a tenth child. Insert joke about fielding enough personnel to run is own backyard offense here.
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