Phillip Rivers Overrated?

[Art_Vandalay]

6 minutes ago, Starless said:

Can you honestly say that if a few plays hadn't gone the other way, Peyton Manning would still have rings? Or Eli Manning? or Roethlisberger? 

I'm going to refer back to the first sentence of my last post. What-ifs are pointless. Most people probably think Rivers is better than Eli, but there's a 100% chance Eli will get in before Rivers (if he does at all).

Again, a QB who has no conference championships, All-Pro's, or MVP's getting into the Hall would be unprecedented.

[Apparition]

1 minute ago, Art_Vandalay said:

Again, a QB who has no conference championships, All-Pro's, or MVP's getting into the Hall would be unprecedented.

I'm not arguing for his Hall of Fame candidacy. I'm saying there's very little separating him from being in the conversation for top-10 of all time, and a lot of that lack of 'hardware' was due to circumstances out of his control.

[Nightime]

1 hour ago, Starless said:

Yup. And for a number of others there were plays that swung entire seasons for which they weren't even on the field. Remember Reche Caldwell in the '06 AFCCG? or Gostkowski's missed PAT in '15? 

Caldwell’s drop and Gostkowski’s miss, if they were corrected, would have brought the games to overtime. 

Manning would then be reliant on a coin toss to get to a SB...granted, his defenses were actually good enough to get a stop in OT

[Bearerofnews]

7 hours ago, Art_Vandalay said:

His first four years as a starter (years 3-6), he had a good O-line along with two skill players that could be considered top 5 all-time at their positions (LT and Gates). He also had a solid defense all of those years (top 10 in two of those years and middle of the pack the others). It's extremely rare that a great QB has elite talent surrounding him for the majority of his career due to a hard cap. All things considered, SD has done a pretty good job giving Rivers some help throughout his career.

So many excuses are made for the guy. The furthest he made it was the AFCCG once. He's never been named even 2nd team all-pro. His overall regular season record it slightly over .500, and he's been underwhelming in the postseason with a 5-6 record and mediocre stats. He's never had an elite regular season or postseason and his lack of accolades reflect that. Great QB's that's have played for more than 10 years typically have at least one year where they either blow up the stat sheet in the regular season or go on a deep postseason run. He's not HOF worthy.

You talk about talent, but ignore coaching. What qbs have ever won with coaches as bad as Norv and Mccoy. Not to mention in 2 division games that were lost by 3 points each, his kicker missed 4 fgs. Brady has 3 rings due to 3 fgs. Rivers has missed making it to 2 additional AFCC due to 4 missed fgs.

You keep overvaluing all pros where he should of got all pro bids in 08, 09 and 2010. He is 1 of 5 qbs in NFL history with 4 or more seasons with 100 plus passer rating with atleast 400 attempts and unlike 3 of those other 4 qbs, he has done it with 3 different coaches.

His defense fumbled a game winning int vs Brady in 06. He proceeded to drive his offense in position to tie the game to only have Kaeding miss. In 07, he was playing on a torn ACL and even then if Chris Chambers doesnt let Asante Samuels tear a ball out of his hand for an int, Chargers have a good chance to win. Or if Vrabel doesnt get away with illegally tripping Rivers, Chargers have a chance to win.

Rivers has had some of the worst luck and breaks. #1 offense and defense and team misses the playoffs due to an all time bad special teams. Oline has been a make shift unit for almost a decade.  We all know about the constant injuries before the season even starts, Chargers front office letting talented players go like Turner, Sproles, LT, V Jackson, etc.

Rivers production, that isnt predicated off singular seasons or arbritary achievements are as good as anyone who has played the game.

From number of 25 plus td seasons, number of 4000 yd seasons, number of 65% comp seasons, number of 100 plus passer rating seasons, number of 7.8 ypa seasons. His overall DVOA avgs. His overall PR avgs.

Chargers are one of the worst run franchises and Rivers has been the only constant. Without Rivers, Chargers would be the Browns level of futility. 

When you can say 1 all pro season would make someone a HOFer in your book... fam, then he already is a HOFer in your book. Ya just aint got to the last page yet.

 

When something as arbritary as 1 all pro season is the bridge from HOF to not, then there really is no need for a bridge, because that gap is non-existent.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Bearerofnews

[Bearerofnews]

6 hours ago, Art_Vandalay said:

I'm not saying he's not a great QB. I'm sure if you polled all football fans, they'd take Rivers over Eli. But certain accomplishments mean more for QB's than any other position. With other positions, you can accumulate stats over the course of your career and become a HOFer. But if Rivers gets inducted into the HOF with Pro Bowls being his greatest accomplishment, that would be unprecedented.... unless someone can point to another HOF QB that has none of these on their resume...

Conference championship
MVP or OPOTY
1st or 2nd Team All-Pro

 

Warren Moon

[VigilantZombie]

Could care less about the answer to the second part of that question lol.

As for the first. For a lot of his career imo, Rivers' talent was wasted. They rarely had a complete team, that is not suggesting they haven't had talent such as LT and others but defensively and on the Oline and even somewhat at WR they left a lot to be desired. He has a pretty good team now but that Oline is still shaky.

If you put him in Pittsburgh, NE or Dallas (or another team with a highly rated Oline and other weapons) I think he wins a SB.

He is underrated imo

[ET80]

3 hours ago, Art_Vandalay said:

Again, a QB who has no conference championships, All-Pro's, or MVP's getting into the Hall would be unprecedented.

Warren Moon?

[VigilantZombie]

I'm not sure I believe Rivers is an HOF QB in today's game but I will say this, I think if the Chargers would've done better by him, he could've been.

[Bearerofnews]

I was wrong about Warren Moon. He had some 2nd team all pro. They did all pros differently back then, did them by conference.

The 3 years Moon was all pro, never 1st team. They had 5 qbs, 5 qbs and 4 qbs.  If that was the format now, no doubt Rivers would have atleast 3 all pros, potentially 5. 

08, 09 and 2010. Potentially 13 and 18.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Bearerofnews

[Bearerofnews]

Maybe Rivers has been an all pro. Seems to suggest that here.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2009/allpro.htm

[Jlowe22]

31 minutes ago, Bearerofnews said:

Maybe Rivers has been an all pro. Seems to suggest that here.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2009/allpro.htm

Thats PFF all pro.

[Steelersfan43]

5 hours ago, Starless said:

Yup. And for a number of others there were plays that swung entire seasons for which they weren't even on the field. Remember Reche Caldwell in the '06 AFCCG? or Gostkowski's missed PAT in '15? 

To be fair with Peyton Manning, he was also unlucky in the playoffs

The injury of Dwight Freeney at the end of the game against the Jets in 2009 in the AFC title game was a huge factor in the loss in the Super Bowl against the Saints, since the defense of the Colts were built by their pass rush and the fact that Freeney was not himself, it hurts a lot to the Colts and the Colts defense could not leave the field in the last 3 quarter(Brees was 29-32 in the last 3 quarter)

The Colts only had 17 points in this game, but in the first 55 minutes of the game, the offense Colts had only 6 offensives drive! ... One of his drives was ended by a huge drop by Pierre Garcon on a 3rd down and another drive, Matt Stover missed an FG ... No margin for error and the onside kick by Sean Payton was huge

2012 is another year where we can say that it was bad luck for his team

[SkippyX]

Why can't Rivers just be a very good QB who is also about the 12th best of the 2000's and the 3rd best of his class?

• Why does it have to be Hall of Fame or terrible.

He's put up some very good regular season numbers but he's played poorly in the playoffs.

• He is 8th all time in regular season passer rating but there are 11 active QBs ahead of him in playoff passer rating.
• His only statistically significant playoff run was the year he also averaged only 173 yards passing over 2 games.
• His most memorable playoff game was capped with a game winning drive... by Billy Volek.

Joe Flacco had as many 100+ rated playoff games in his SB MVP 2012 as Rivers has in his entire 11 game playoff career.

Edited August 20, 2019 by SkippyX

[Dr LBC]

9 hours ago, Art_Vandalay said:

His first four years as a starter (years 3-6), he had a good O-line along with two skill players that could be considered top 5 all-time at their positions (LT and Gates). He also had a solid defense all of those years (top 10 in two of those years and middle of the pack the others). It's extremely rare that a great QB has elite talent surrounding him for the majority of his career due to a hard cap. All things considered, SD has done a pretty good job giving Rivers some help throughout his career.

So many excuses are made for the guy. The furthest he made it was the AFCCG once. He's never been named even 2nd team all-pro. His overall regular season record it slightly over .500, and he's been underwhelming in the postseason with a 5-6 record and mediocre stats. He's never had an elite regular season or postseason and his lack of accolades reflect that. Great QB's that's have played for more than 10 years typically have at least one year where they either blow up the stat sheet in the regular season or go on a deep postseason run. He's not HOF worthy.

Well, that's just patently false unless you're ignoring 2010 (or discounting it because "Brady threw more TD's and less interceptions") where he led the league in passing, Y/A, and YPG while finishing Top 5 in completion % (Top 3), QB rating (Top 3), and TD's.*  Rivers was a legitimate OPOY candidate in 2010 (in the days before the league split hairs and would award OPOY and MVP separately; back then if it was Peyton or Brady up for MVP they just gave them the OPOY award too).

*Sits back and patiently waits for the goalposts to be moved to "I mean 'elite' as in all-time elite."

[Art_Vandalay]

Still seeing a lot of what-ifs in here...

Warren Moon had an all-pro and an OPOTY award.

I'm not saying the guy isn't great. Just saying he's overrated because a lot of people consider him a HOFer despite his lack of any significant awards.