On \u2018The Kay Adams Show,\u2018 Indianapolis Colts unretired longtime veteran quarterback Philip Rivers recently announced *drum roll* that he\u2019ll retire again following the close of the 2025 campaign:<\/p>\n
With injuries to their top two starting quarterbacks, the 44-year-old Rivers shockingly came out of retirement after a pure desperation call by the Colts, despite having not played since the 2020 season in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n
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It became because of his familiarity and fondness of Colts head coach Shane Steichen, as well as his prior positive experience playing for Indianapolis during the 2020 \u2018COVID-19\u2019 campaign\u2014which was his sole season in Indy.<\/p>\n
While the Colts went 0-3 during Rivers\u2019 three recent starts, he filled in admirably and played about as well as anyone could\u2019ve reasonably expected given the extraordinary circumstances and prolonged layoff from the game.<\/p>\n
Even with Rivers\u2019 significantly diminished arm strength, his football IQ, pre-snap recognition, and ability to rapidly process\/anticipate through his throwing reads remained about as elite as anyone who\u2019s recently played the game at starting quarterback\u2014both active and retired.<\/p>\n
From a football purist perspective, it was both beautiful and incredible to watch \u2018Grandpa Phil\u2019 still quickly dissect opposing defenses and rip it out there\u2014especially on primetime a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
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With Rivers\u2019 son a senior next year and also having a soon-to-be 9th grader on the team, Rivers will turn back to coaching high school football again at Saint Michael Catholic High School in Fairhope, Alabama, for 2026.<\/p>\n
While he wished the game outcomes had been different, Rivers has publicly stated he had a blast playing again these last three weeks for the Colts. He will likely serve as their emergency QB for the regular season finale against the Houston Texans, with Indianapolis already eliminated from playoff contention.<\/p>\n
His shocking 3-game \u2018unretirement tour\u2019 likely only helped Rivers\u2019 arguably borderline case for becoming an eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer\u2014even if it delayed his candidacy another five years in waiting. Recency bias and leaving on such a surprisingly positive and feel good story note should resonate very well with the NFL general public and perhaps most importantly, the Hall of Fame voters going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On \u2018The Kay Adams Show,\u2018 Indianapolis Colts unretired longtime veteran quarterback Philip Rivers recently announced *drum roll* that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[2005,7,253,2004,392,2381,9892,6,3725,4975],"class_list":{"0":"post-649556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indianapolis-colts","8":"tag-colts","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-houston-texans","11":"tag-indianapolis","12":"tag-indianapolis-colts","13":"tag-indianapoliscolts","14":"tag-kay-adams","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-philip-rivers","17":"tag-shane-steichen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115828729061082444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649556","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=649556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}