Philip Rivers may be ready for a return to the NFL, but his wife is still a little worried about the toll the sport could take on his body.
The former Indianapolis Colts quarterback, who last played in an NFL game in 2020, re-signed from the team’s practice squad on Tuesday after the Colts lost their third straight game to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday while starting quarterback Daniel Jones is out for the remainder of the season with an Achilles injury.
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Rivers, who only officially retired in July, led the Colts to an 11-5 record and a playoff berth in his final season in the league. Prior to that, he played 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Chargers. With the current Colts on the playoff bubble, he could potentially help lead the team back to the postseason.
During a news conference Wednesday, Rivers, 44, discussed returning to the NFL after five years and how his family, including his wife and high school sweetheart Tiffany Rivers, feels about it.
“My wife has been my biggest fan the whole time I’ve been playing, and she’s nervous about the physical aspect, as you’d expect any wife to be,” he said. Despite his wife’s injury concerns, the NFL player said “it never worried me,” noting, “I mean, for 250 games or whatever, it’s a risk, like you see every week.”
It’s unclear whether Rivers will play in Sunday’s Colts game against the Seattle Seahawks (Getty Images)
Rivers played 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Chargers before spending one season with the Colts (Getty Images)
“Whether you’re in peak physical condition at 24 or you’re not so sure at 44. Anything can happen,” he added.
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“These guys are big and fast, like they are, so I’m just taking it day by day,” Rivers continued. “You never wish or expect something like this to happen, but shooting, if something like this happened, it would take me a long time to recover.”
Rivers also discussed how much his 10 children would look forward to watching him play if he did get the chance to step in. The current plan for Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks is to start Riley Leonard, who is currently injured with a knee injury but was placed on the practice roster Wednesday.
He explained that because some of his children were so young, they had no memories of his previous seasons in the league. “My six-year-old asked, ‘Dad, why don’t you play anymore?'” Rivers said.
In addition to his 10 children — Halle, 23, Caroline, 20, Grace, 19, Gunnar, 17, Sarah, 15, Peter, 14, Rebecca, 12, Claire, 10, Anna, 6, and Andrew, 2 — Rivers revealed in a May YouTube video shared on NFL coach Jon Gruden’s channel that his eldest child has a son.
