Experience or athleticism? Rivers’ return forces NFL debate over modern QBs’ acumen

The successful return of 44-year-old quarterback Philip Rivers has retired signal-callers like Matt Ryan and Tom Brady insisting that they could make an NFL comeback of their own, citing the lost art of reading opposing defenses.

Rivers’ return to the gridiron with the Indianapolis Colts felt like a movie. 

A high school football coach — Rivers is mentoring youngsters at St. Michael Catholic High School in Alabama — gets pulled off the couch for one last ride with his former team as they hunt for a playoff berth.

The signal-caller couldn’t pinpoint his weight before the game — his rounder jaw and thicker frame hinted at a few added pounds since his playing days — but the mental acumen hadn’t disappeared.

Late in the second quarter, Rivers saw through a disguised coverage presented by the Seattle Seahawks. He pointed it out to his linemen and fired a tight-window throw to his tight end for a 19-yard gain.

The game ended in heartbreak for the Colts. They lost on a last-second field goal by the Seahawks, but the 2004 first-round pick proved he’s still a viable option under center.

“This isn’t about me,” Rivers, who is a grandfather, said after the game. “We got a team that’s scrapping like crazy to try to stay alive and get in the postseason. So obviously, we’re all disappointed.”

But Rivers did more than just delay his Hall of Fame case by five years or re-up his NFL-sponsored health insurance. He forced a generation of retired passers to reckon with their own potential comebacks.

“I’ve had these feelings where I’ve been sitting and watching games and been like, ‘Man, I think I could go out there and do it,’” broadcaster Matt Ryan, who last played with the Colts in 2022, said on CBS.

“I certainly could,” Tom Brady told FOX Sports. “The game is about, for the quarterback, from the neck up. We used to have a saying at Michigan, ‘The mental is to the physical as four is to one at the quarterback position.’ That doesn’t really go away. Do you still have the physical ability to still do it — take the hits, make the throws, the drops, buy a little time in the pocket?”

The unique mental perspective of passers like Brady, Ryan and Rivers has dominated NFL conversations this weekend. Over the last two decades, there has been a gradual change in how quarterbacks dissect opposing defenses and approach their options.

Peyton Manning was notorious for intensive film study that afforded him an unparalleled insight into the opposing defense’s play-calling. He often learned the exact responsibilities of each defender in the opposing secondary and used that knowledge to drive his decision-making in the pocket.

Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, though immensely talented, doesn’t have the same approach. He uses “pure progression” as he works through his options on a pass play. The first option is always the first option, regardless of what the defense presents pre-snap.

Defenses forced this shift around the league with increasingly complex disguises before the snap.

“The game has evolved from just, hey, this is the look you’re getting, one-high, two-high reads, splits, where it’s evolving,” Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady said. “We might have an alert on a play, but outside of that, offenses are living in pure progression reads where you don’t care about the coverage.”

But, according to the old-school quarterbacks in the media world, that convenience comes with a trade-off.

“They teach the QB to read the short throw 1st & then move to deeper one, this messes up footwork & timing so it’s tough when a D plays it well,” Hall of Famer Kurt Warner wrote on X. “Also it can often force a QB to RUSH through progression to get to next read & that may be what you see in terms of being ‘chased’ off of throws!”

The numbers back him up. The average NFL passer rating under pressure has ticked down since 2018, according to Next Gen Stats.

It’s up to coaches like Washington’s Dan Quinn to help their quarterbacks work through reads as efficiently as possible. Speed — getting the ball out before the pass rush can beat the line or defensive backs can read the route concepts — is essential.

“So often now is it a half-field read: these two players, or these three players,” Quinn said Tuesday. “So, numbers, the concepts of how you go, the quickness that it goes into that, it’s a lot and it’s a big deal.”

The Rivers experiment, testing whether vintage processing can trump modern athleticism, will continue for at least one more week. He’s slated to start for the Colts again on Monday night against the San Francisco 49ers.