It’s rare enough to have an ex-NFL quarterback for a high school football coach.
To watch him return to the league after a five-year retirement?
Now that’s unprecedented.
Philip Rivers’ high school team at St. Michael Catholic in Alabama is enthusiastically anticipating their head coach’s return to the gridiron, with the 44-year-old quarterback starting for the Colts in their Week 15 matchup against the Seahawks.
A feature story from NFL Network, which was published early Sunday morning, highlighted the program’s excitement and its reaction to one whirlwind of a week.
“Combining phone calls, texts, emails, we’ve probably gotten 200-300 messages from media,” said co-athletics director and defensive coordinator Simon Cortopassi, who was one of the select few people Rivers informed before making his decision.
“It’s been crazy,” he added. “But for all of us, it’s going to be awesome to watch.”
Senior receiver Tucker Tomlinson recalled him and his Cardinals teammates tirelessly refreshing their school computers — the school enforces a strict “no cell phones” policy — when they heard Monday that Rivers could possibly step in for the injured Daniel Jones, who ruptured his Achilles against the Jaguars in Week 14.
Later that night, the players were gobsmacked to find out that Rivers was heading to Indianapolis for a workout.
“When we finally saw it, we’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is real,’” Tomlinson told NFL Network. “That’s something I would never expect. … Reports like that come out all the time, you know, it’s just crap. You see it, you’re just like, that’s funny. Let me joke with (his son) Gunner about it. This time seemed different, and it really came into fruition.”
With the help of their parents, Tomlinson and his teammates rented out a local Mexican restaurant on Sunday so they could hold a watch party.
Rivers took charge of the Cardinals in 2021 after he first hung up his cleats.
A school that opened in 2016 and lost 18 games in its first year, St. Michael Catholic won its first regional game under Rivers, went 12–2 last year, and then 13–1 in its latest campaign.
Despite the lengthy hiatus, Rivers won’t have much catching up to do, as his Cardinals run the same offense as the Colts, with whom he spent his last season in the NFL.
“We literally run the exact same scheme as the Colts,” Tomlinson said. “We have these teach tapes — how to run routes in specific ways — and they’re just from Colts games in previous years.”
Meanwhile, the 44-year-old grandfather has stayed in playing shape by constantly joining his team for workouts and keeping his arm warm at practices alongside his son, Gunner, one of the top high school QB prospects in the country.
Rivers, who has thrown for over 63,000 yards and 400 touchdowns during an illustrious 17-year career, will delay his Hall of Fame clock another five years by suiting up for the Colts on Sunday.
He doesn’t seem too concerned, according to Cortopassi.
“He just said, ‘I’m going for it,’” Cortopassi said. “He was like, ‘There’s only one way to find out if you can do it, and that’s to try it.’”
The game was 3-3 at the end of the first quarter.
