Pizza Hut buffet, a bleeding finger and ‘dadgummit!’: Philip Rivers’ football life

Screaming at (and nearly fighting) Von Miller. Teammates who hated him, then loved him. Playing linebacker in high school. Teaching beat writers how to watch film. Taking pain-killing shots in his ribs just to play.

These are the scenes behind Philip Rivers’ inimitable life in football, from lifelong friends, coaches, rivals, teammates and the quarterback himself:

1. He waited for the call while his bare feet hugged the white sand of the Florida Panhandle, while his kids splashed in the Gulf of Mexico and his wife stood by his side.

“Goll-ee,” Philip Rivers says, looking back on those first few hours of free agency, “you just wanted it all figured out in a hurry.”

It felt strange, he remembers, shopping for a new team after 16 years with one franchise, not knowing where Tom Brady was headed, not knowing if Drew Brees was coming back, not knowing if there was a club out there that wanted a 38-year-old quarterback with this low and awkward throwing motion who’d tossed 20 picks and lost 12 games last year.

He’d heard the Colts, and he’d hoped for the Colts, but he still wasn’t sure it would get done.

So he stood in the sand and he waited.

2. Why keep playing? Rivers caught himself thinking about this recently. He’s 38. He’s made more money than he could ever spend. He’s got nine kids at home.

Why not just walk away?

His answer: Wednesdays. There’s something about Wednesdays.

“Wednesdays are always a heck of a day,” he says.

3. Here’s how the Colts refer to their new quarterback:

Pro Bowl linebacker Darius Leonard: “Uncle Phil.”

Rookie running back Jonathan Taylor: “Mr. Rivers.”

Veteran left tackle Anthony Castonzo: “A sixth-grade kid ready to play his first day of football.”

4. Wednesdays around the NFL are install day. It’s when the game plan first comes to life, when each team hits the practice field and starts to scheme up ways to win its next game.

On Wednesdays, every team gets the chance to restart. On Wednesdays, everything is still possible.

5. Rivers’ favorite saying, the one on the hat he wears everywhere he goes: “Nunc Coepi.” His translation: “Begin again.”

6. One lesson that’s hung with him all these years: The team always comes first. Dad taught him that. Philip was in 10th grade when Steve Rivers, the head coach at Athens (Ala.) High School, sat his son down and told him he wasn’t ready to start at quarterback. The team needed a senior in that spot, not a sophomore. Philip nodded, then went out and won the starting weakside linebacker job.

“And he played that season like he was trying to get recruited at WILL linebacker,” a former teammate, Von Webb, says with a laugh.

7. Webb: “The guy you see on TV today talking trash? He was the same exact guy back then. If I beat him at NCAA Football, which I usually did, he wouldn’t let me stop playing until he could win and talk all that noise.”

8. This didn’t change when Rivers went to college. Or the NFL. There he was, career game No. 232 in Chicago a few weeks back, barking across the line of scrimmage at a linebacker 15 years younger. “Two-eight, he turned the corner on you,” Rivers yapped at the Bears’ Roquan Smith, referring to a long run from Taylor earlier in the game.

“He TURNED THE CORNER on you.”

“There are certainly times,” Rivers admits, “where you go, ‘What am I doing?’”

His teammates have grown to love it. Leonard trades barbs with his new quarterback all practice long.

His new head coach? He’s coming around.

“I’m not sure anyone has a style quite like Philip,” Frank Reich says with a grin.

The remarkable part is that Rivers does it without swearing. Instead: daggone and dadgummit, over and over and over.

“I’ve known him since he was 8 years old,” says one of his high school assistant coaches, Allen Creasy, “and I’ve never heard a curse word come out of his mouth, which is pretty amazing when you think about how much he talks.”

9. Nick Hardwick, Rivers’ longtime center with the Chargers, brings up a 2015 game against the Broncos. He was doing sideline work by then, standing a few feet away when Rivers was tackled by Von Miller, then driven violently into the turf.

The QB responded by grabbing Miller’s jersey and screaming at him hysterically.

Hardwick thought he’d lost his mind.

“He’s fighting one of the baddest dudes on the planet,” Hardwick says. “It’d be like intentionally fighting a lion.”

10. Hardwick: “Do you know how many times we’d be in the middle of a game and Phil would just get going and start talking trash to the defensive line? And we’d go from an 8 to a 10.5 real quick? Do you know how much fun that is?”

There was a flip side to that, of course. Hardwick remembers staring into the faces of the defensive linemen Rivers was screaming at, watching their anger bubble up, worrying about what kind of hit he was about to take next.

“I’m thinking, ‘Gosh, he had to do it again, didn’t he?’”

But he grew to love Rivers’ fire, even if it got the Chargers into trouble. Hardwick’s a native Hoosier, a Lawrence North and Purdue grad, so he’s got a worthy comparison.

“Growing up here, like a lot of people, I loved Reggie Miller,” he says. “When he’s on your side, it’s awesome. It’s the best. When he’s not? You probably hate him.”

11. Ways in which Philip Rivers is a regular guy:

In high school, he drove a Ford Taurus.

For most of his pro career, he drove a Ford F250.

He married his sixth-grade sweetheart, Tiffany, and never dated anyone else. They have nine kids. Tiffany drives a minivan.

He wears ratty old sweatshirts, bolo ties and beat-up cowboy boots (not the nice ones).

12. Being the head coach’s son back in high school had its perks. During the summers, Philip would borrow his dad’s keys to the stadium and sneak in at night, flipping the lights on so he could throw go-routes to his favorite receiver.

“It’d just be us in there for two, three hours,” Webb remembers.

They’d grab the Pizza Hut buffet in between two-a-day practices, hit the local water park on Tuesday nights (“It was $2.50 to get in,” Rivers brags 20 years later) and war on PlayStation on off days.

After his year at weakside linebacker, Philip took over at quarterback and became one of the best in the state of Alabama. (Little known fact: He also played free safety, leading the state in interceptions as a junior. On special teams, he punted and returned kicks.) Soon enough, college coaches started showing up. Lots of them. One night, Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville made the four-hour drive to watch Rivers in person.

Athens was up big most of the game, and at one point late in the fourth, Rivers had thrown it only five times. Dad called him over to the sideline before a third-and-5.

“What do you think we should do?” Steve Rivers asked.

“Run it,” Philip shot back. “We’re killing them on the ground.”

So they did. And the QB was right. The defense couldn’t stop them.

Athens won easy. Rivers barely threw the ball all night.

“The thought that this really important coach had come really far to watch him play never even crossed his mind,” Creasy says.

13. Auburn was honest with him. They wanted him, they just didn’t want him at quarterback.

Noel Mazzone, the Tigers’ offensive coordinator at the time, wasn’t sold on Rivers’ release. It was low. It was awkward. It didn’t look right. Jason Campbell, another prized QB recruit, was headed to Auburn, and the coaches felt like he was the future. Rivers wasn’t the priority.

“We’ll find you a place to play,” Mazzone told Rivers. “Maybe linebacker. Maybe tight end.”

Rivers said no thanks. He went to North Carolina State, started as a true freshman and became one of the best quarterbacks in the country.

14. Ways in which Philip Rivers is not a regular guy:

That low and awkward throwing motion has made him $230 million over 17 seasons.

It’s helped him pile up 404 touchdowns and 60,869 yards. Only five quarterbacks in league history have bettered those totals. Their names: Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre and Dan Marino.

15. Before his senior year, North Carolina State hired Mazzone as offensive coordinator. When Mazzone showed up on the first day of practice, he noticed Rivers wasn’t with the other QBs.

“Where’s Philip?” he asked.

They pointed toward the other end of the field.

Rivers was wearing a No. 86 jersey, running through drills with the tight ends. Mazzone jogged over.

“What are you doing over here?” he asked.

“I thought you said I was supposed to play tight end in college?” Rivers said, smiling.

16. Before he ever met him, this is what Charlie Whitehurst thought of Philip Rivers:

“I hated him. Hated him. Man, he’s just so easy to dislike if you don’t know him. We played him in college — I was at Clemson, he was at NC State — and he made a play late and they won and I just never forgot that. He was talking … the … whole … game. He wouldn’t shut up. Ever. Same as you see now. Then, he was drafted so high? And good gosh, with that funny throwing motion?”

17. After Rivers tore his ACL during a 2008 AFC divisional playoff game in Indianapolis, he hobbled off the field and screamed at Colts fans on his way to the locker room.

“Don’t worry!” he shouted. “I’ll be back!”

He lobbied to return. The doctors wouldn’t let him. After the Chargers upset the Colts, he spent the flight home begging them to let him put off surgery so he could play in the following Sunday’s AFC Championship Game in New England.

“Can it be done?” Rivers kept asking. “Can it be done?”

On that they consented. Rivers had his meniscus removed the next day, but they held off on the ACL. By night’s end he was doing high-knees in his front yard, trying to loosen his knee up for practice that week.

He didn’t make it on the field until Friday. Hardwick thought there was no chance he’d play.

“None,” he says. “Zero.”

Rivers didn’t miss a snap.

18. Whitehurst remembers the bleeding finger. It happened in a game against the Jaguars in 2007. Rivers sliced the index finger on his throwing hand on a helmet, then came off the field and failed to mention it. “It was a deep cut, really nasty, lots of blood,” Whitehurst says. “We’re used to injuries in football, but this one was bad. I was like, ‘Is someone else gonna have to go in?’”

Finally, after a few minutes, Rivers motioned to the trainers that he might need some tape.

He went back in the next series.

“He didn’t care,” Whitehurst says. “Part of his finger was cut off, he’s bleeding like crazy, and he didn’t give a shit. After that day, I was like, ‘This dude’s a little bit nuts. He’s crazy.’”

Rivers hasn’t missed a start in 15 years.

19. This is what Whitehurst thinks of Rivers now:

“Every guy who’s ever played on a team with him loves him. I mean, loves him. He kicks ass on the field, works harder than every single guy on the team and literally does every single thing to win. Plus, he’s fun as shit to be around. You can talk to every teammate he’s ever had and I’ll bet you they’ll tell you the same thing.”

20. This is what they say about Rivers:

Creasy, his former high school assistant: “My only regret in my coaching career is that my sons didn’t get a chance to be on a team with him.”

Webb, his favorite receiver in high school: “If the Colts win the Super Bowl this year, I’d feel like I won the Super Bowl. That’s how much I’m rooting for Phil.”

Hardwick, his longtime center: “A lot of people think of him as this villain because he talks so much trash. In reality, he’s probably the greatest human being they’ve ever met. You know how many people I talk to who tell me that Philip Rivers is their best friend? I’d still follow Phil anywhere. I’d do anything for him to this day.”

Reich, his head coach: “I know the kind of player he is. I know the kind of teammate he is. I know the kind of leader he is. He’s so accurate, so smart, so tough. He’s just got a knack for making plays … he’s obviously made a lot of coaches look good with the way he plays. I’m sure glad he’s a Colt.”

21. For years in San Diego, after his weekly media availability would finish, Rivers would linger at his locker and talk football with the local reporters. Coverages. Blitzes. Audibles. Schemes. He’d teach them the game.

Kevin Acee was one of those reporters. He’s the longtime sports columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, and over Rivers’ 16 years with the Chargers, no one in the media grew closer to the quarterback.

“People say football is like rocket science — well, it might be harder,” Acee says. “I watched a lot of film, but he almost felt like it was his duty to make sure I was informed. His memory was incredible. I bet he could remember what all 11 guys on offense and defense were doing on every play of his career. I’m making that up, but I’ll bet it’s true.”

But it wasn’t just Acee. When it came to the media, Rivers might be the most accessible star quarterback of his era.

“Didn’t matter who you were,” Acee adds. “Some reporter he’d never met would ask for a few minutes of his time, and after about 10 minutes, that reporter would be ready to walk away, and Philip would just keep talking, and keep talking, and keep talking. He’d follow the guy out of the locker room, saying ‘Hey! I got more to tell you!’”

22. Rivers stunk it up in a loss in Cleveland in Week 5 this season, tossing two costly interceptions in the second half. Near the end of his news conference later that evening, he was asked about one of them.

“Just wasn’t a good play,” he snapped. “That’s about the only explanation you’re gonna get.”

In the days that followed, he wrestled over a decision: Read the criticism or ignore it? Block it out or embrace it? Back when he was with the Chargers, Rivers knew the writers well enough to know what was coming his way after a bad game.

In Indianapolis, he was genuinely curious.

“I went back and forth,” he admitted later. “(Finally) I said, ‘Dadgummit, I’m going to find them.’”

He dug in. It wasn’t pretty.

“If you stink it up, they better write, ‘Rivers better get with it,’” he said later. “You expect it. And I felt like you guys were pretty dang honest.”

23. The season’s effectively over before the last game is played, and 52 members of the Chargers’ roster shuffle into a hotel ballroom in Oakland the night before the 2011 finale. Most are thinking ahead — vacation, free agency, anything but a Week 17 game against the Raiders that won’t mean a thing in the standings.

Then Rivers stands in front of the room.

I want you to go back to when you were a kid. Picture that. Picture meeting an NFL player, and that player giving you a jersey, and him telling you that you get to wear that jersey and play in an NFL game tomorrow.

Just one!

We’ve got one game.

I don’t care what it means in the standings. I don’t care about the playoffs. Tomorrow, you’re playing for yourself, for your family, for every single guy in this room.

We’ve got one game.

Just one!

We have everything we all dreamed about when we were kids.

The silence doesn’t last. The room erupts.

Hardwick: “The place went absolutely crazy. Everyone walked in there with these long faces and Phil just whipped us into a frenzy. By God, we were ready the next day. Won by a bunch.”

24. Another speech. This time, back at NC State, 12 years into his pro career. Rivers was on campus to address the football program and tell the young players what it had meant to him.

It was two minutes and seven seconds of pure passion.

“I wish I could suit up and play today, and get after some of you guys on defense,” he tells the players at the end. “I would WEAR Y’ALL OUT!”

Colts running back Nyheim Hines was a sophomore for the Wolfpack that season, sitting in the back of the room that day, watching the quarterback he’d end up taking handoffs from in the pros darn near bring the house down.

“We would’ve been ready to play in the national championship game after that speech,” Hines says.

25. Hines: “I remember we went on the field after that for a workout and he just tore it up. The guy was wearing khakis and he hit every single throw for two hours.”

26. During his last few years with the Chargers, Rivers would call Hardwick on Tuesday or Wednesday night and tell him how banged up he was. The pain was catching up to him.

Some weeks, he could barely move.

“I don’t know how I’m going to make it this time,” Rivers would tell him.

But sure enough, every single Sunday, he was out there.

“And not just playing, but playing well, running all over the place,” Hardwick says. “He’s played through some stuff. The ACL. Broken ribs. Drop foot. The bleeding finger.”

The Chargers’ former team doctor, David Chao, remembers having to routinely give Rivers an intercostal nerve block before kickoff to numb the pain in his ribs, information Chao only recently revealed with the quarterback’s permission.

27. Rivers has started 229 consecutive games, 96 more than any quarterback in football.

28. With his toes still in the white sand of the Florida Panhandle, the QB waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Patience has never been his strongest virtue.

Finally, his phone buzzed, and after a quick conversation with his agent — “Looks like it’s gonna work out with the Colts,” Rivers was told — he did something he never does. He stood in silence.

After a few minutes, he turned to Tiffany.

“It’s done. It’s official. It’s the Colts.”

They gathered up the kids, all nine of them, and shared the news. The family was moving to the Midwest. The older ones tapped “Indianapolis” into their search bars. “It’s close to Chicago!” they shouted. “It’s close to Nashville!” Fifteen years in sunny San Diego were nice, but it left the family craving all four seasons. The kids wanted to see some snow.

They began packing a few weeks later.

“Are we really keeping all of this?” Tiffany asked her husband one day, staring at a stack of Chargers’ gear.

Hmmmm.

He thought about if for a minute. What to do with 16 years’ worth of T-shirts and shorts and sweatshirts with lightning bolts on them?

“Let’s box them up,” Philip told her. “One day, it’ll be nice to have an old pair of sweats.”

Pretty soon, he got on the phone with his new equipment staff.

“I need some Colts gear,” he told them.

Time to begin again.

29. He’d stand on the sidewalk outside his elementary school each afternoon, lunch box in hand, backpack strapped tight, waiting for the buses to rumble past and Dad to wave him over. He was 6 years old, too young to cross Somerville Road on his own.

When it was clear, he’d holler out, “Dad! Dad!” and wait for the signal. Then he’d scurry over.

Steve Rivers’ high school team practiced across the street. Philip became the water boy, the ball boy, the tackling grunt, the coaching assistant, even the first-down spotter. Anytime Dad needed a measurement, he’d squeeze into the pile, find the football and hoist his arms up. “A yard short!” he’d yell out.

“While most kids his age were busy building forts out of tackling dummies,” Creasy says, “Philip was out there learning the triple option.”

He’d watch the drills his dad ran his team through in the afternoons, then re-enact them in the backyard at night. He’d wear his Pop Warner jersey around the house, pads and all. He’d play for hours outside, tossing the ball up in the air, catching it, then putting jukes on trees.

It was on those practice fields across from Somerville Road he learned to throw. The high school team didn’t have any junior-sized footballs, so Philip would grip the full-sized ones and hurl them best he could, keeping his elbow low, almost like he was pushing the ball forward. His release was low and it was awkward, but it worked.

No need to correct him, Dad thought. The kid threw it pretty daggone well.

30. This is what Steve Rivers always told his son: the best compliment he could ever give him wasn’t that he was a great quarterback.

It was that he was a heck of a football player.

“That’s what I always wanted to hear,” Philip says. “That’s still what I want to hear.”