Rivers ready to endure as Chargers’ QB
It’s difficult to imagine how Philip Rivers does much better than 4,400 yards and 32 touchdowns and a 70 percent completion rate. But he’ll try.
That said, it’s absolutely certain Rivers isn’t going to best Father Time. And he’s not attempting to. He is just trying to keep pace.
“As I’m getting a little older, and you know how long the year is,” he said, “it’s important to make sure my legs last four quarters in a game and 20 games in a season.”
And so it is that Rivers has several times over the past few months found himself sharing trail space with a coyote or pushing a kid’s bicycle through the hills and canyons around his Santaluz home.
Chargers training camp begins Thursday, and Rivers has made sure he’s ready for its rigors -- and, more pertinently, the 19 or 20 games he hopes will follow -- by engaging in a modified exercise regimen and cutting down on his consumption of bread and other fattening foods.
“I can’t eat what I want,” he said. “You can’t do that forever. When you’re 20, you can do whatever. I’m not 20 anymore.”
Nope.
He’ll turn 33 in December.
Peyton Manning is 38, the same age at which Dan Marino, John Elway and Joe Montana retired.
But that kind of longevity doesn’t just happen.
So Rivers , in addition to the work he did at Chargers Park, dedicated himself to his own brand of interval training in order to maintain (and improve) his body’s ability to operate at a high level in short bursts over an extended period. Interval training is a form of exercise that involves periods of high intensity followed by periods of rest. This is actually the second year Rivers has used it as part of his offseason training.
For him, that means leaving his home several times a week to run then walk, run then walk, run then walk, often granting the request of one or with one or more of his seven children to accompany him for the 40-minute workout. The young ones, not surprisingly, lose steam before the finish, and so Rivers ends up helping them back home as he completes his workout.
“This is the most I’ve done it,” he said. “I’m more into it this year . . . If I can have my legs and be strong late in games and late in the season . . . I buy in.”
Rivers focus on making sure he lasts is understandable. It’s expected. It’s encouraging.
Fact is, though, the end of the season has never been his problem. The Chargers are 34-7 after November in Rivers’ eight seasons as their starting quarterback. Even in his down years of 2011-12, Rivers’ passer rating in December/January was 101.4, and the Chargers went 7-3.
The fourth quarter was most certainly his biggest downfall in 2011 and ’12, but his 90.7 rating in the fourth quarter since 2006 ranks fifth in the NFL among quarterbacks who have thrown at least 700 fourth-quarter passes in that span.
Last year, Rivers’ rating in the fourth quarter was 96.7, third in the NFL behind Peyton Manning and Tony Romo.
He wants to make sure that type of production continues. Rivers’ contract runs through 2015. It is expected the Chargers will make a push to lock him up for longer after this season. Barring some severe injury – and Rivers has never missed a start, his streak of 128 straight ranking second to Eli Manning’s 151 -- you have to figure he’ll play at least another five years after this one.
Rivers, of course, is focused on the 2014 season. But those things he’s doing now should help ensure he’s the Chargers’ quarterback for some time.
