- 15 hours ago
Seth and Sean react to the Colts signing QB Philip Rivers to the practice squad. Does he make us more or less nervous about the Colts in a few weeks?
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00:00Phillip Rivers is back in our lives in the AFC South.
00:03He signs with the Colts' practice squad yesterday.
00:07That was, you know what, I'm glad you said, I'm glad you mentioned that
00:12because that should be one of the weirdest things about this
00:15because when they expanded the practice squad rules,
00:18they created this world where we see this all the time,
00:21these older veterans who are still on practice squads.
00:24Hey kids, well we're telling you about the Boz and John Madden.
00:29Let me also tell you about the old days of the practice squad
00:31where it was five guys who were all in their first two years in the league,
00:35most of whom never had a real shot of making it.
00:38Now you've got guys who are putting off their Hall of Fame induction potentially
00:44or at least he's putting off his Hall of Fame eligibility
00:47if he gets elevated to the active roster.
00:50Oh, is that what it is?
00:51Okay, so he's got to be on the active roster.
00:54That's the way I understand it.
00:56I might be wrong, but what I read yesterday was that
00:58if he's on the practice squad, he'll still be eligible for the Hall of Fame
01:02five years after his retirement date.
01:05But if he gets elevated to the active roster, that's it.
01:08They've got to kick it down the can.
01:10That's pretty – you know what, honestly,
01:11that might be one of the coolest things about this.
01:13It shows you a little bit that Phillip Rivers isn't all wrapped up
01:17in thinking about what used to be and everything.
01:19It's funny.
01:20I heard a theory on the way in.
01:21I was listening to not our national show, the Before Us, but another station's.
01:27And it was Chris Canty.
01:28It was ESPN.
01:29I mean, I don't know why.
01:30I'm toe-tapping around at five in the morning.
01:33Who cares?
01:33But he made an interesting point in that – and I don't think Phillip Rivers
01:38is thinking this way.
01:39I think Phillip Rivers is just a nut who wants to play football again
01:42and probably wants to help out an old friend in Shane Steichen.
01:44They go back to San Diego days with the Chargers when Steichen was on the staff there.
01:51Is that Phillip Rivers, he's a finalist for the Hall of Fame.
01:54He's one of the final 26 guys.
01:56It's his first go-round.
01:58This is his first time on the ballot.
02:00He's a finalist along with Drew Brees and Eli Manning and several other guys.
02:04And I think the thought is – I texted with John McClain yesterday about this,
02:09about where does he stand in his chances to get in.
02:12And it doesn't look like he's got a great chance.
02:13I don't think Phillip Rivers is a Hall of Famer.
02:16I think he's really, really – he was really, really good, but never an MVP,
02:19never made it to a Super Bowl, was never one of the four or five best quarterbacks
02:22in football.
02:23But Canty made an interesting point.
02:25He's like, man, if he comes off the bench here, comes off the street,
02:30and does something like this for the Indianapolis Colts,
02:32does it enhance his Hall of Fame chances?
02:34Yeah, if they somehow – I don't know.
02:37I mean, the odds of that happening are like 2%, but I just thought it was –
02:40Did they make the Super Bowl, I guess?
02:41It was an interesting angle to it that I –
02:43I hadn't even entertained it because I don't think it's going to work.
02:46That's why.
02:46Honestly, okay, I do have to back up a little bit.
02:49It's amazing how thoroughly I had written off the Colts in my mind,
02:52where I did – I had a moment yesterday.
02:55I was like, wow, what are they going to do anyway?
02:57And then I remembered, oh, yeah, they've got –
02:59they still have one of the best records in the league.
03:01Yeah.
03:02Or one of the better records in the league.
03:04Yeah.
03:04And there's a chance that they could make the playoffs, et cetera, et cetera.
03:07I don't – I honestly, as a Texans fan, I don't like – I really don't.
03:12I would much prefer that Anthony Richardson make a heroic comeback
03:15from his broken orbital bone.
03:18How did he break his orbital?
03:20A resistance band snapped into it.
03:23This guy is Mr. Glass.
03:25It is amazing.
03:26I had completely forgotten – there's so many things about the Colts
03:29that I've completely forgotten, it turns out.
03:31He broke his orbital bone a few weeks ago.
03:34We talked about this at the time when in pregame warm-ups,
03:38he was working with a resistance band,
03:39and apparently it snapped back into his face and he broke his orbital bone.
03:42Was that the same pregame warm-up where Charverius Ward wound up
03:45in concussion protocol because he had a teammate slam into him?
03:49I don't know.
03:50I don't know either, but the Colts have a warm-up issue.
03:53But Anthony Richardson has a fragility issue.
03:55Yeah.
03:56Or frailty.
03:58Either one.
03:58Are those both words?
03:59I think they are both.
04:00I think they both work there.
04:02For me, it's 6.07 in the morning, perfectly fine.
04:05I had completely forgotten that fragility was a word.
04:07Yeah, yeah.
04:08So, this – so, Phillip Rivers signing here.
04:12I don't know, man, I'm – you're right, as a Texan fan,
04:14I'd rather they just go with the guys who we know are going to lose a bunch of games.
04:18Yeah.
04:18And – but as a football fan, I'm completely intrigued by this.
04:22I mean, this would be – this would be unprecedented, right?
04:25I mean, if this is – this is Flacco coming off the couch times five.
04:30Flacco – Joe Flacco came in and had that heroic run at the end of the 2023 season
04:36for the Browns, but he had played the year before.
04:38He was just on the couch for, you know, ten weeks or whatever it was of the season.
04:43As J.J. Watt pointed out yesterday, you sent me this tweet after I'd already retweeted you.
04:48I'm looking at it.
04:49Go ahead.
04:49I was deeply offended that you don't monitor my Twitter account on a half-hour basis.
04:55J.J. Watt, who's doing the Colts game this week, apparently, said,
04:59Fun fact learned in production meetings.
05:01Phillip Rivers ran the same offense as the Colts for his son Gunnar's high school team this season.
05:06He and Shane Steichen spoke weekly about it, discussing plays and even film.
05:12So familiarity with the scheme should be no problem whatsoever.
05:15Yeah.
05:16This tells me Phillip Rivers is going to start on Sunday, man.
05:19I read that tweet, and I'm like, he is starting on Sunday.
05:22I wonder how much of the RPO package and the zone reads and everything they're going to keep for Phillip Rivers.
05:30You know Rivers.
05:31He's just so – he'd be like, I'll do a coach on this day.
05:35Oh, yeah, he'd love to run the football.
05:36He wouldn't do it well, but he'd love to do it.
05:38I'm not going to try to do my Phillip Rivers impression.
05:40As Lance found out yesterday, again, talking to the young generation,
05:45a lot of people convinced that Lance's impersonation of Phillip Rivers is AI.
05:50Yeah, they were like, hey, no, everybody, this is AI.
05:52This isn't really Phillip Rivers.
05:53It's like, oh, God.
05:54That's the ultimate compliment when you get –
05:55I guess.
05:57I'm saying to Lance, yeah.
05:58When you get mistaken for AI on the voice front, man.
06:03But his impersonation of Rivers isn't as much about the accuracy of the – it's the spirit.
06:09It's the over-the-top.
06:10It's the spirit of it, yeah.
06:12It's the willingness to do anything.
06:14AI would probably make it sound more like Phillip Rivers, but it wouldn't capture the spirit of Phillip Rivers.
06:18It's really funny, yeah, no, it's really, really funny.
06:22But it was like all these people.
06:24Like, hey, I'm pretty sure this is AI, everybody.
06:27Like, no, it's clearly – oh, oh, yeah.
06:30I hate this world.
06:31That happened with Lance like 20 years ago when he did a Mack Brown impersonation,
06:35and everybody thought it was – this is before – this is before Twitter.
06:39This is before any social media, and everybody thought it was actually Mack Brown.
06:45It was really funny.
06:46All right, so Phillip Rivers is 44 years old, which – a few factoids here.
06:56He is a grandfather, as you pointed out yesterday.
06:59Yeah, was he coaching his son or his grandson in high school?
07:02I guess that was his son, Gunnar.
07:04His son, Gunnar.
07:05He's older – he's four years older than his head coach.
07:08He's older – boy, I heard the number this morning.
07:11He's older than nearly half the head coaches in the NFL right now.
07:14You and I talked about that yesterday, how it's a young man's game now.
07:17The median is 47, I think.
07:19Almost all of them are – you know what they are, Sean?
07:21Half the NFL coaches are between age 37 and 47.
07:25Yeah.
07:25So he's like – yeah.
07:26He's older than like – I think the number is like 13 of them or something like that.
07:29Yeah, yeah, so it's –
07:32He's older than his OC, Jim Bob Cooter.
07:35His center, Tanner Bordellini, who right now is best known for being walked back into the lap of whoever the –
07:45Daniel Jones.
07:46Oh, my God.
07:48In the game where Will Anderson Jr. just shoved him back there.
07:52He was – Tanner Bordellini was 22 months old when Phillip Rivers was drafted into the NFL back in 2004.
08:00And we mentioned the Hall of Fame.
08:01This – it was one of the first things I thought of because I'm kind of a Hall of Fame junkie.
08:05And McClain confirmed – it was confirmed by other people yesterday.
08:08I texted John immediately.
08:09I said, hey, does this reset his clock for the Hall of Fame?
08:13And John's like, yeah, absolutely it does.
08:15It starts over again.
08:16If he plays – you know, if he gets signed to a contract, it starts over again.
08:20I'll text John and get confirmation on the practice squad thing this morning, Seth.
08:24I'll text him a little later so I'm not texting him too early.
08:28But, yeah, Phillip Rivers, 44 years old, hasn't played in five years.
08:33Now, Canty had the take where I liked it where he's like, maybe this affects his Hall of Fame candidacy.
08:38The take he had that I didn't like was, hey, when we last saw Phillip Rivers,
08:42he won four out of the last five games at the end of that season to get them into the playoffs.
08:49That was in 2020.
08:50That was the COVID year, so it was even harder to do that.
08:53And I'm like, everybody was dealing with COVID.
08:57Like, it wasn't harder for the Colts to win four out of five games.
09:00Like, the whole league is dealing with COVID.
09:03He was going against a team that was dealing with the COVID issue.
09:07According to Stephen Holder on ESPN, Rivers is currently a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2026.
09:15Per the Hall of Fame, Rivers signing to the Colts practice squad has no effect on his eligibility.
09:19However, if he signs to the active roster, his eligibility clock would reset.
09:24Okay, so I would say the practice squad thing then is probably he's going to practice this week.
09:31He's going to do some things this week.
09:33Like, it's probably to see, like, what would be sad is if they signed him to the actual roster right out of the chute.
09:40Yeah.
09:40And then he pulls a hamstring because he's old and he doesn't get on the field.
09:44And his Hall of Fame candidacy gets rejiggered for another five years.
09:48I don't think it's necessarily sad in that he sounds like he's pretty busy in retirement.
09:54I mean, he's got, how many kids does he have?
09:55Ten.
09:56It's ten.
09:57I asked.
09:57Yeah, ten.
09:58I asked.
09:58He's got ten kids.
09:59He's coaching his son's high school football team.
10:01It's not like he's sitting around kind of stewing about how, oh, boy, I'm going to get disrespected
10:07because they're not going to put me in the Hall of Fame or just waiting for the call or anything.
10:10Yeah, sad may be the wrong word.
10:12I'm just saying, like, it would suck if his candidacy got pushed back another five years
10:17because of an administrative issue.
10:19Like, if he got hurt in practice or something like that.
10:21You know, like, as opposed to if he gets in a game, then all bets are off.
10:24You know, you knew what you were getting into.
10:25I feel like I wish they would make everybody wait until they're 50 to get inducted in the
10:30Hall of Fame for two reasons.
10:32One, incentive to not die.
10:35So, two, which is important.
10:38And, two, you don't appreciate it when you're a young man.
10:43You don't necessarily, it doesn't hit you quite the same way.
10:47You don't have perspective on things.
10:49Like, when I was just, you know, pro football fame, my high school Hall of Fame,
10:53pretty much the same thing.
10:55But I remember when I got inducted into my high school and college Hall of Fames,
10:59it was, like, right after I was done playing.
11:00And I didn't really, I hadn't had time to sit back and really reflect on my, on everything.
11:05Would you have, so if you got inducted into your high school Hall of Fame a little later,
11:09you would have appreciated it a little bit?
11:11I would have made it more like Michael Jordan's speech.
11:13I would have just, I would have invited some of the teachers and coaches that I really hated.
11:17I would have invited them there and then dressed them down in front of everybody.
11:20Gotcha, all right.
11:21In front of everybody in that breakout room at the Addison.
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