The Historical Significance of Philip Rivers’ NFL Resurgence

We have quarterback injuries galore and we have a quarterback that's a grandfather returning to the National Football League.

Is this an unprecedented thing for Philip Rivers to return?

If so, who did it more, Philip or somebody else?

We have those answers and more coming up in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes, his PODC broadcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

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Now onto our episode.

Hello my football friends.

This is Darren.

He's of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And as we release missing this episode on Christmas day, many of you are visiting with, you know, friends, relatives.

Maybe it's your grandparents.

That's where I used to go when I was much younger.

My grandparents were still alive.

So maybe this is an appropriate time to talk about a grandparent in a national football League.

It's kind of unprecedented.

I don't know if it's ever happened before.

Not sure even how to research that.

But Philip Rivers recently, as far as two or three weeks ago rejoined the Indianapolis Colts at the age of 43.

So far it looks like he's going to start in a few more.

So very appropriate to talk about a grandparent on Christmas.

Christmas release of an episode in the NFL.

Now this is not the first time that this has happened.

We're going to talk about some of those aspects and players in just a moment.

And he's not even the longest tenured player to be out of the NFL and to come back we'll talk about those two and historical aspects of that.

But it's very compelling story.

He's not playing up to what he used to at least in his first two games.

He's got some balls that are fluttering quite a bit.

As you know.

We talked to Ed Cleese just the other day day in our big bold predictions for week 17, that week 16, week 15, Phillip was sort of off the mark a little bit.

And passes were not as crisp as you would expect a National Football League quarterback.

But they were timely, they were effective.

He was getting his team in the right plays and he's helping the Colts even though they haven't won a game in the first two starts.

They are competitive in the games against two very good teams in Seattle and Denver that he played against.

So extremely interesting aspect to look at.

But let's look at the historic aspects of this football return to the National Football League.

Five years for Philip Rivers.

I guess you could almost want to sing the song Old man river as you go, but not a very appropriate Christmas song and not very a telling of what Philip Rivers is accomplishing.

But we do have some very compelling stories.

So he's retired in 94, 95, 96, 97.

The Atlanta Falcons come calling with their starting quarterback Steve Chandler.

They want a solid backup.

They running for a playoff and super bowl run that year.

Were the Falcons the dirty birds as they were known and.

And Steve Deburgh played in that league.

He had, he started in one game, played on the team for eight games.

So after a five year hiatus, very similar to Philip Rivers, came out of retirement, played National Football League game with a quality start.

Interesting.

But even those two are not the most long tenured players to be out of the the National Football League.

A non quarterback, Tony Manderich, who was a very highly touted college prospect when he came out into the NFL draft and he was out of the league though didn't have such a great beginning to his National Football League career.

Rejoined with Indianapolis in 96 and actually his second time around in the National Football League had a little bit more maturity, had some time maybe to review film and you know, hone his skills.

Had a much better second half of his career after a five year absence.

Interesting.

If we go way back, we had a player that was called back to play in a championship game in the National Football League.

Bronco Nagursky, the longtime Chicago Bear came out of the Minnesota Golden Gophers program.

He's not quite a quarterback, but he did throw one of the most important passes in National Football League history.

He threw a pass that back then you had the five yard rule.

A pass had to be thrown from five yards or more behind the line of scrimmage.

It was very questionable when Nagurski released the ball where he was when he threw a touchdown pass.

The only touchdown of the game as the Bears defeated the Portsmouth Spartans.

Catching that pass was none other than Red Grange.

And you can read a little bit about Red Grange in a recent book that we were a part of.

So great book.

You can catch it on Pigskin Dispatch, our Pigskin Dispatch store on pigskindispatch.com or anywhere on Amazon under Chris Willis's or my my name.

Some great history there.

But Bronco was not the longest tenured even though that was a five year absence.

Some of them were self inflicted.

You can read about that on some other website where they're not.

Positive football history.

We're talking positive football history here in Pixie and Dispatch.

If you remember that great comeback win the Steelers had over the Cleveland Browns after being down, I don't know what they were, probably three or four touchdowns in the second half and they just went on A miraculous thing really earned back his name of the Tommy Gun Maddox offense.

And Tommy Maddox never saw the field again after that.

But six years out of the National Football League for Tommy Maddox, but even he is not the longest tenured one that in our research we had a guy that was a Heisman Trophy winner, very highly touted out of Boston College, came into the league again, did not have a very good NFL career early on and left the league, end up going to the cfl, having good time.

That's Doug Flutie, if you remember that.

So this is a Heisman winner.

He was a comeback player of the year, much like Maddox was and he led the Bills to playoffs in each of his two seasons starting in Buffalo.

But yeah, Doug Flutie a nine year absence with it.

So those are some of the players that we came up not to diminish what Philip Rivers is doing, but to honor Philip Rivers and all these other players who many of them came back and had much better careers in the National Football League the second time around.

Maybe that'll hold true for Philip Rivers, but man did he have a stellar hall of Fame career his first time in the league.

So I doubt it's going to happen.

He'll be better than that, but you never know.

Maybe he can miraculously get somehow get the Colts into the playoffs and do some damage or at least win some games.

But it sure is a lot of fun to talk about.

It's fun to go back and preserve the history based on what his action is and coming back at the age of 43.

And the other funny thing about him is when he came back, Philip Rivers replaced Riley Leonard, the rookie from Notre Dame.

And Rivers has children older than Riley Leonard is the man who replaced them has children older than him.

Kind of an odd situation.

I don't know if we will see that again.

Not sure about the whole grandfather thing again, but we can tell you probably.

Doug Flutie with his nine year absence is probably the longest tenured man to play in the NFL, leave the NFL and then return and.

But what are your thoughts?

Who, who are some of the people that you have that maybe somebody we didn't mention?

Maybe you want to comment on some of the people that we did talk about?

Some good memories.

Remember really positive things here.

Pigs can dispatch.

So comment in the comments section on YouTube or email us at pixkin dispatchgmail.com and until next time, everybody have a Merry Christmas and have a great gridiron day.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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