FAIRHOPE, Ala. – It is 45 minutes before Philip Rivers’ high school coaching debut for St. Michael Catholic High, and his father, Steve, is standing on the track that encircles Fairhope Municipal Stadium. Steve was a coach of great repute, an Alabama Hall of Famer who won 188 games in his storied career. Now, he is greeting old acquaintances, glad-handing, sharing hugs and handshakes with family and friends. It’s a 5 1/2-hour drive south from his and his wife Joan’s home in Decatur, Ala., but there’s no chance he’s going to miss the opportunity to watch his son follow in his footsteps.
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After 240 NFL starts and 17 seasons with the San Diego/LA Chargers and Indianapolis Colts, Philip retired this offseason and is embarking on his new dream journey to work as a high school football coach.
Now, Steve is surveying the scene, the cheerleaders gathering, the fans slowly streaming into the stadium St. Michael shares with Fairhope High, the players stretching, and he is taken back to his very first game at Pelham (Ala.) High all those years ago.
“Oh, I know exactly what he’s going through right now,” Steve says. “Look, playing is one thing, coaching is another. But you know, he’s been preparing to do this his whole life.”
He turns to Joan and smiles. “You remember how he used to go to the high school basketball games, he was 4 years old, the pep band would play and Philip would be like this …”
They both mimic a conductor leading the band.
“I mean, he’s always been in charge,” Steve says. “So this is such a blessing. He’s doing what he wants to do. He had a pretty good job, he could have played (in the NFL) again, but it was time. It was time. Oh, and here was something I meant to tell you …”
GRANDPA!!!!
Suddenly, Steve is surrounded by his 13 grandchildren, nine of them Philip’s and wife Tiffany’s children. These are his blessings, among so many. He hugs every last one like he’ll never let go.
“Look, Grandpa, I’ve got glitter on my face,” one of the grandchildren says.
“Wow, that’s great,” Steve says.
He turns to a reporter. “It’s so nice having them all so close now,” he says.
One day earlier, Philip was saying how so many of his greatest football memories came during high school, when he played for his father at Athens High School. Friday Night Lights have always been central to the Rivers family’s existence, even if this is a Thursday night. For Philip, this is not a lark or a side hustle; he’s in it for the long run.
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Steve finishes loving on his grandchildren, then turns back to a reporter.
“This brings us a lot of joy,” he is saying, glancing at Joan. “It means he’s become something I always thought he was going to be, something he’s passionate about and truly loves. I just knew on the way up, even through the NFL years, that he was going to be a coach.”
About 100 yards away, Philip is surveying the scene with his assistant coaches, some of them full-time as school employees and some of them working regular jobs outside the school. One of those coaches is Stephen Rivers, Philip’s younger brother by 11 years, a towering figure who is as chill as his older brother is demonstrative. A few months earlier, his company accommodated his wishes and transferred him from central Alabama down here to the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay, right across the bridge from Mobile. Now, he is living his long-held dream to work with Philip, acting as the team’s wide receivers coach.
“I think we’ve got a pretty good quarterbacks coach,” he said, laughing.
One day earlier, after a swampy walk-through on the school’s soupy practice field, Stephen was talking about the fulfillment of a life-long dream.
“This is something we’ve talked about for a long time,” he said after practice. “When we did talk about it, I don’t think we fully grasped what it would be like when it finally happened. I was his biggest fan; I never wanted him to retire, honestly. When he did, I didn’t want it to be over. And then it was like, shoot, now we do have a chance to do this and have our families grow up together.
“You think about all the football knowledge in that brain of his, it’s amazing, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he does in the game, the stuff he’ll be able to do. You think about what he’s done against the toughest defenses in the world in 25 seconds, so that 40 seconds in high school is going to feel like two minutes. One day this summer, he wasn’t here, I was telling the players, and this is the brother and fan coming out in me, but this is one of the top minds in football, and don’t forget that.”
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He laughed when asked about his brother’s excitable nature.
“I expect I’ll be doing a lot of shirt-pulling before this is over,” Stephen said with a smile.
It is a Rockwellian tableau, the grandparents on the track near the field, Philip and Stephen conversing while watching the players warm up, the Rivers’ clans gathering in the stands, sons Gunner (seventh grade) and Pete (fourth grade) working the sidelines as ballboys, preparing to watch Philip’s debut as St. Michael, a six-year-old 4A school, takes on 1A McIntosh from outside Mobile.
Philip knew he would be a little nervous, but in a good way, a different way.
“It’s weird because I won’t have the ball in my hands,” he said the day before the game. “It’s a little bit of a helpless feeling. But I’m enjoying the heck out of it. All the things, shoot, what are you gonna call in the game, how much do you want to show? We’ve got to win, but do we want to show this, do we want to run this? They’re like, ‘Coach, you’re overthinking this.’ ”
Philip Rivers the coach is like Philip Rivers the NFL quarterback: He’s all in. This is not a stepping stone. He has no interest in college coaching; recruiting has no appeal to him. He has no interest in the NFL, not with the time expenditure it would require from a father of nine. No, this is home. This is where he wants to be, where he needs to be.
“I hope, God willing, if you ask me right now, I hope to coach my grandsons here,” he said. “I hope I’m here that long. Shoot, who knows, things change, but that’s my current intention. Shoot, we’re building a house here, we better win and do well or y’all will run me off. That’s my goal.”
(Jake Arthur / For The Athletic)The day before Thursday’s game, St. Michael has just finished that muddy walkthrough on its rain-soaked practice field, and Rivers has gathered his young men for a short talk. Well, short by Rivers’ standards. As he often says, “I’ll ramble at the drop of a hat.”
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“Think of how far we’ve come,” he says to his players. “Here we are, August 26, and we’re getting ready to play a football game. Think of how much better you’ve gotten. Think of how much stronger y’all have gotten, how your football IQ has gotten better, the understanding of what the offense is, the defense is, how much better you’ve gotten at your technique, how much better you’ve all gotten collectively.
“Dang, it’s crazy since the first practice in March until now. I mean, shoot, we ain’t even the same team. That’s a credit to you guys because you’ve worked at it. It’s meant something to you. It has to mean something to you. You’re gonna spend ’til 6:30 every day after school doing it, it better mean something, right? Look, we’re gonna play well. I want you to come to school tomorrow and be confident and focused. Not overly confident but focused. We ARE the better team. But we still have to go out there and earn it. Just think about LSU, and who was that team they played…?”
“Troy,” several players reply, referencing the school that sits three hours northeast of Fairhope.
“Right,” Rivers says. “And Troy beat ’em. Who’s the better team? LSU, right? You know what I’m saying, but every year, it happens in high school, it happens in college and it happens in the pros. We’re supposed to win so let’s go out there and do it.
“All right, red jerseys and gray helmets tomorrow. Sweet. Y’all will look sharp.”
Everybody bows their heads, they recite the Lord’s Prayer.
They break it down; Thursday night can’t get here fast enough.
Rivers started thinking about his post-NFL career as far back as 2014-15, even though he knew he still had several years left to play. He knew from the start he wanted to be a high school football coach, just like his dad. It was just a matter of deciding where he wanted to settle his large family.
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In 2018, he heard about this new Catholic school here in Fairhope and decided to do some summer camps. Then, after talking with the principal and athletic director, he saw there was significant mutual interest in him coaching once his career was finished. So they forged a gentlemen’s agreement where it was determined that once Rivers retired, whenever that might be, he would take over the program.
“I told them (the St. Michael administration), ‘I’m gonna play two years there (in Indianapolis),’ so they hired an interim (athletic director Paul Knapstein) and said, ‘It would really help if we announced you,” Rivers said the day before his debut against 1A McIntosh.
Rivers called Colts GM Chris Ballard and coach Frank Reich. He had just signed with the Colts, and five days later he was taking this high school job. “I said (to them), ‘I wanna ask y’all because I don’t want this to look jacked up,’ like ‘Rivers signs with the Colts, takes a high school job five days later.’ But they were good with it and they knew what I was going to do.”
After 16 years in San Diego and then Los Angeles, Rivers and his family thoroughly enjoyed their Indianapolis experience, despite the pandemic.
“It was a weird year but it was a great year and a year I’m very thankful for,” Rivers said. “I did enjoy it but we didn’t get the full effect. Just the games were weird (in empty stadiums) and (my family) didn’t get to meet any players’ families. I couldn’t take them to training camp or anything, so that was a weird dynamic, but they had fun. I had one of my favorite years of football I can ever remember. I really did. One of the funnest. I couldn’t believe how tight and how close of a team we had and how much I felt a part of that in a short time. My kids got to see snow, the leaves fall, the fall season. It was awesome. A little weird because of what was going on (with COVID) but awesome.”
The Colts won 11 games that season and had a chance to knock off the favored Bills in the playoffs. Rivers had a fine comeback year after a dicey final season in Los Angeles. When the year ended, Ballard told the media that both Rivers and the Colts would take a month, contemplate their options and reach an agreement on how to move forward – bring Rivers back or move on.
But after just two weeks, give or take, Rivers made the decision: He was done.
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“I felt wanted and felt like I was going to be the quarterback there if I wanted to be, so I didn’t feel like they (the Colts) were hemming and hawing,” he said. “I felt like Chris wanted me back. But we talked about it as a family and it became clear: I felt like the time was right to be here (in Fairhope). I could have let it go for another year, but I’ve got one (child) who’s going to be a junior, another one is going to be a freshman, gosh, next year is going to be harder to move, and I’m one more year removed from getting the football program going.
“It just felt right. It felt complete. So could I still play? Yes. I can still throw it and I think we could have had a really good year this year, but I felt complete. I felt like other than short of winning a championship, what are we trying to gain by playing again? Am I playing just to play; what’s the best for us? Really this has been awesome. From setting the schedule and working with the coaches and filling out equipment orders, we paint the field, mow it, organize the equipment room, all that stuff. I was waiting for something that excited me, and this was it.”
Rivers’ father, Steve, and brother Stephen were by his side for his coaching debut with St. Michael. (Jake Arthur / For The Athletic)It is 10 minutes before game time and there’s a small problem:
McIntosh is nowhere to be found. As St. Michael players stretch, Rivers scans the stadium. He sees his players and the officials and the fans, the McIntosh cheerleaders and a host of media people who have come to chronicle his coaching debut, but no McIntosh players or coaches. Is it a debut if the other team fails to show up? Rivers wants to start 1-0 – he’s adopted the Frank Reich 1-0 mantra – but this wasn’t quite what he had in mind.
Finally, with the clock winding down to game time, McIntosh appears. The Demons have only 25 players. There are seven classifications in Alabama high school football and the 1A school figures to be an unworthy foil this evening for St. Michael. It eventually shows. The opposition hails from an economically disadvantaged area of Washington County, north of Mobile. McIntosh doesn’t have the numbers or the advantages St. Michael enjoys. Philip knows this is going to be a cakewalk, but there’s no way he’s letting on to his players.
In the moments before the game, he gathers his team outside the locker room, in a small parking lot behind the concession stand. He is ready to give his first pre-game speech as a high school coach. Earlier he was saying he’s heard good pregame speeches and lousy ones over the years, and determined it’s best to keep it short and sweet, which is not a Rivers strength, necessarily.
“Y’all excited?” he asks his players.
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“Yessir.”
“We’ve talked about the process, right? We’ve talked about the process since dadgum March,” he says. “Y’all are tired of hearing it, but you’re gonna hear about it for a long time. This is the next step in the process. We have to do it focusing on things we can control. And what can we control? Alignment, assignment, fundamentals, technique and effort – EFFORT! There’s only 25 of them over there (on the McIntosh sideline). Don’t worry about them or what they’re doing. Control those things and we’ll execute and be fine.
“It’s y’all’s chance to play, men. Shoot, we’ve got our red home uniforms on, and in front of our home crowd, huh? It doesn’t get much better. I’m tell y’all it doesn’t get much better. You ought to be a little nervous but you should be really excited. I’m telling y’all, us coaches, we can’t WAIT to coach you and watch you play. Go get after it. Cut it loose and have fun doing it. Hey, ‘win’ on three. Let’s do it.”
This is one of the most important things Rivers wants to impart to his players, a true appreciation for the opportunity before them. His greatest memories are from playing for his father at Athens High. Neither Philip nor Steve will ever forget the final game of Philip’s high school career; Athens lost a playoff game, and when the locker room had cleared out, it was just Steve and Philip, the two alone and embracing, tears in their eyes. It was over, at least for Philip, but it was special.
And now? It’s the Rivers’ circle of life.
“I’m just seeing 20 years flashing in front of me,” Philip is saying prior to the game. “Now two of my sons, a seventh grader (Gunner) and a fourth grader (Pete), are spotting the ball and running around, and golly, I was doing that for my dad 25 years ago or so. It’s really special.”
The players trudge from the parking lot onto the turf, led by their junior quarterback Josh Murphy. How fortunate is this young man? He gets to be coached by a 17-year NFL star quarterback whose resume is good enough to warrant a strong Hall of Fame conversation.
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Think he was a little intimidated the first time he threw in front of Rivers during a summer camp?
“Definitely,” Murphy was saying after Wednesday’s practice. “In spring, I had baseball, so I came out a little later, but when I first came out to practices, I was really nervous throwing in front of a possible Hall of Fame quarterback. I was nervous but it was exciting, and I was really thankful. It’s such a blessing.
“I think we were all a little bit nervous at first, honestly, but now he’s Coach Rivers. He’s our coach. I always knew of him, obviously, but I was a huge Matt Ryan and Drew Brees fan growing up. I didn’t really watch (Rivers’) games until I met him at summer camp a few years ago, then we started to hear he was going to become our coach. So last year, I watched all his games with the Colts.
“I’ve learned so much from him. Without him, I don’t think I’d be the player I am now. Or the person I am now. He’s a great leader and he really shows us his faith. He’s really vocal about it. It’s really important to him and it’s important to me. He’s a great role model.”
By now, Rivers is just, well, Coach.
During one early-season practice, Murphy threw a pass that was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. The linebacker who made the play ran down the field toward the end zone yelling, “Ninety-yard touchdown! Ninety-yard touchdown’’ just like Rivers did in that video of him throwing a 90-yarder and talking his G-rated trash talk to a Jacksonville pass-rusher.
Now, the St. Michael Cardinals are gathering on the field, and there’s a small mishap. As a priest begins the on-field invocation, a player yells “Let’s go” and the players go charging onto the field, the crowd going “Sssshhhhh.”
Hey, it’s the first game of the year. They’re working on it.
On the first play of Philip Rivers’ high school coaching career, he runs a double reverse. It breaks for big yardage. The tone has been set. The day before, Rivers told his players they would run the ball every play on the first drive, and they did, quickly scoring a touchdown.
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On the sideline, Rivers turns to Gunner and Pete and says, “That was a good start, huh?”
The McIntosh Demons have issues. They need two timeouts on their first drive because they don’t line up properly. There are delays of game. False starts. Bad snaps, fumbled snaps. A hot mess. Rivers tries to keep his guys sharp and engaged – “Who wants to cover (the kickoff)…who wants to cover?” he yells as the ball is kicked downfield after another St. Michael score — but the game is getting out of hand quickly.
There are a couple of “dadgummits” and at least one “Jiminy Christmas,” but for the most part Rivers is satisfied with what he’s seeing. Once, he gets mildly annoyed by his team, but he knows and everybody knows, this is a glorified scrimmage, with two top 10 region teams on the schedule the next two weeks.
At one point, Rivers is forced to sidestep a reporter (not this one) who is lingering nearby on the sidelines. “Dang,” he says with a broad smile, “this is different. Y’all can come into the coach’s box.”
By halftime, it’s 42-0.
This is not insignificant for St. Michael, regardless of the opponent. The school has only been open six years and this is just the fifth year for the football program. These seniors have mostly gotten crushed, going 5-25 during that span. A year ago, they scored 111 points. Today, they have 42. In a half. But Rivers knows once he gets this program up and rolling, St. Michael won’t be scheduling the likes of McIntosh in the future.
As Rivers gathers with his coaches at halftime, he’s thinking of all the plays that figure to go the other way once the schedule gets tough, with games against Jackson and at Williamson. He’s not going to let his boys get cocky, even if the first downs are 14 to 1. An official comes by to ask if he’s OK with six-minute quarters and a running clock, as requested by the McIntosh coach. “Never heard that before, but OK,” Rivers says.
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After a bathroom break, he returns and gathers his players.
“Look at the scoreboard,” Rivers says. It reads Home: 42 Visitor: 0. “You seniors, y’all ever seen the scoreboard look like that? No? Good, I’m glad you got to see it. Y’all deserve to see it like that.
“Now here’s the bad. We threw a pass that next week, it’s probably intercepted for a touchdown. We kicked one off that’s probably returned for a touchdown. We gave up two go balls that next week against those cats that are probably touchdowns. We had a PAT blocked. We had some sloppiness to us. While we handled our business, we dropped some balls we don’t usually drop, right, so we have to at least acknowledge that.
“I’m not saying that as a scare tactic for next week because we’re playing Jackson; we’re gonna beat their butt is what I think. But they ain’t gonna look like that (McIntosh). We’re gonna get after their tail. We’ve just gotta clean some of that stuff up. Don’t come to school tomorrow like ‘Man, ooooh, we’re unreal.’ We can be danged good but this is week one. We play the big boys soon, so let’s handle the rest of it with class, don’t do anything stupid, don’t show them up and let’s not play flat. Let’s go.”
In the second half, St. Michael doesn’t have a single offensive snap. Still, the Cardinals score on a fumble return for a touchdown to make the final 49-0. The clock rolls and soon it’s over, although it’s been over for quite a while.
“I’ve never seen that in my life; no offensive snaps?” Rivers says as the players congregate around him after the game. “Be happy, enjoy it. But now things are gonna crank up a little bit. It’s more fun when it’s cranked up, right? The Jackson Aggies are coming right here next Thursday, this place will be a little more cranked up, OK? Hey, you know what they think? They think we’re not very good. I’m just telling you the truth.
“OK, awesome, awesome. Let’s say a prayer and then get your butt on the bus. And don’t be late to school. Hey, be the first one in class, OK? The first one. We’re gonna do it together. Together on three, one…two…three, together.”
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After a 10-minute media scrum with reporters, Coach Rivers makes the rounds, hugs his family, shares some words with his agent, Jim Denton, who came down from Nashville to see his debut. Rivers and St. Michael are 1-0, dadgummit, but the schedule turns brutal in the coming weeks. He walks back past the concession stand, into the darkness of the parking lot and boards the team bus, his past and his future coming together in the most glorious way possible.
(Jake Arthur / For The Athletic)(Top photo: Jake Arthur for The Athletic)
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