Rivers recalled a great Gates’ anecdote that summed up what it was like to play with him.<\/p>\n
“There were times when maybe we were struggling a little bit, maybe we had a couple three-and-outs or maybe we were stopped on a series or two,” Rivers said. “Or maybe it was just a quiet game for Gates thus far. We would break the huddle and he would either kind of tap me on the way by or he would make sure that I heard him and he would say, ‘Come on now.’<\/p>\n
“And I knew that that meant, ‘Alright, he’s about to get rolling’ and, ‘Hey, what am I doing? We’ve got to get him the ball,'” Rivers added.<\/p>\n
But what Rivers remembers the most about his teammate and friend is the bond they built off the field over the years.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s probably too easy to just say, ‘Hall of Famer.’ To me, the first thing that comes into my mind personally is [being] his teammate, his locker mate \u2026 15 years our lockers were side by side,” River said.<\/p>\n
“And then, a competitor. He’s as competitive as a guy as I’ve ever been around. In everything,” Rivers added. “He would probably tell you he’s undefeated in arguments, dominoes. It didn’t matter what we were doing, he was competing.”<\/p>\n
The touchdowns \u2014 all 89 of them \u2014 were just a bonus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rivers recalled a great Gates’ anecdote that summed up what it was like to play with him. “There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2064],"tags":[50430,2716,37,241,7,50429,34,38,1014,262,2444,2443,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-255506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-2025-hof-gates-enshrinement","9":"tag-antonio-gates","10":"tag-app-homepage","11":"tag-chargers","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-gates-editorial-hof-app","14":"tag-homepage-cp","15":"tag-homepage-headlines","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-losangeleschargers","20":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114958310111024025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}