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Rivers won't be the reason the Chargers don't make the playoffs
By Dan Pompei - SportingNews
Dan Pompei
SportingNews.com
On the one side of the line are the Chargers' problems.
No one to play left tackle. A shaky secondary. A group of receivers defenses do not fear.
On the other side of the line are the solutions.
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Football's finest runner. A tight end no one can match up with. A ferocious front seven.
And there stands Philip Rivers, one foot on each side of the line.
Who will you be, Philip? An inexperienced passer who costs his team games? Or a quarterback who takes his team places Drew Brees could not? The answer will define the tenure of general manager A.J. Smith, who essentially chose Rivers over Eli Manning on draft day and Rivers over Brees for a playoff-ready team.
I have been convinced for a long time Rivers will be an excellent NFL quarterback. After visiting Chargers camp, I'm starting to believe it could be sooner than I thought. Rivers looked good in practice, but it isn't what I saw that moved me as much as what I heard.
Rivers' work ethic and preparation have earned him the deep respect of teammates and coaches. Veterans usually are more skeptical of an untested quarterback who is trying to replace a player who won 21 of 32 starts and was football's second-most accurate passer the past two years.
Listen to running back LaDainian Tomlinson: "He's going to be a great quarterback because the intangibles he has are what the great ones have. He's smart. He's able to anticipate what's going on on the football field. He's not a robot quarterback. He has something you can't teach."
Receiver Keenan McCardell, a veteran of 14 NFL seasons, believes Rivers throws a better deep ball than Brees and says Rivers has an advantage seeing the field because he's 5 inches taller. However, McCardell does admit Brees was more comfortable with the offense because of his experience.
Coach Marty Schottenheimer had some interesting thoughts on that subject. I wanted to know whether he would scale back game plans, maybe cut back on formations or on audibles with Rivers. It's still early, but Schottenheimer plans to have a passing game every bit as ambitious as the one Brees directed.
"We won't have to simplify anything from an intellectual standpoint," Schottenheimer said while sitting on a leather couch in his office that overlooks the practice fields at Chargers Park. "There will be, certainly, a period of development that will take place, but Philip Rivers is way ahead of the curve in that regard. In my opinion, the mental side of it is not going to be a factor."
When Schottenheimer and the Chargers staff coached Rivers in the 2004 Senior Bowl, they were impressed with his instincts. Those instincts could be the difference between the Chargers' making or missing the playoffs. "As you know, (instincts) can expedite the development process because it's a matter of maybe reacting to something he hasn't seen and doing the right thing," Schottenheimer says.
The beauty of the situation Rivers steps into is the Chargers don't need their quarterback to carry them. This team is about running the ball and playing good defense. And Schottenheimer acknowledges the Bolts might be more about running the ball this year than they were a year ago, when they ran it 45.5 percent of the time, a lower rate than 15 teams.
The Chargers might not be quite as effective this year with Rivers as they would have been with Brees. But they can be a playoff team.
And at some point soon, they will be capable of more than they ever could have been with Brees.
