POLL: Is It Time To Bench Rivers?

[powderblueboy]

A better QB like Rivers who played the same Patriot team 2 weeks prior and lost putting up 12 points? Or the one that lost the prior season against a weaker Patriot team?> Or the one that lost to the Jets a few years later putting up even fewer points?

Like I said Eli made 2 game deciding plays in those super bowls. you can talk stats all you want but clutch is clutch.

River's made some nice plays in the 4rth quarter against the Pats in 2006: the long throw to Jackson setting up the final td; the long throw to Eric Parker setting up the final 53 yard shank by Kaeding.

He played with a torn ACL in 2007.

The Jets playoff game was a flame-out by Rivers, Norvell and the Charger offense.

[Critty]

There is not a single WR on the team that takes the top off the defense. For a guy like Rivers, he needs legit deep threat speed. Its a much bigger issue than o line.

[blueman]

We will never have an offense of perfect protection and crisp, no-mistakes route running. A QB who can make good throws and with some quicks, who can create in multiple ways would be an upgrade.

[blueman]

Lynn is looking over at Baltimore and drooling. We will draft Hurts, not bring back Rivers, and start Tyrod until idk.

[Critty]

Everything points to Rivers having a bad season with a few good quarters and a couple good games.
The film. His HCs comments. Former players comments who played the game at high level.
Rivers admitting he made poor throws.

And the stats and analytics back up the game tape of his play this year.

Seahawks line is 28th in pass protection based on next gen stats.
Wilson is 3rd in QBR 78.0 with total points added over the course of season 37.5

Chargers line is 16th in pass protection. As in allowing pressure in under 2.5 seconds. So Wilson o line is getting beat more often and he has less time than Rivers, except he buys time.
Rivers is 23rd in QBR 46.0 with a total points added of -4.0 (thats minus 4)

Brady line is 23rd in pass protection.
He has a QBR of 56.4 with a total points added of 8.3. His line has been injured also, like Rivers.

Rivers career stats are up there to be considered hall of Famer.

Id assume we all want him and the team to turn it around go on a great run and win a Superbowl.

But the film and statistics, anayltics, and players who have played this game all are saying he is not getting it done this year.

Not sure why some have decided its everything else but him that is costing the team wins in 2019.

Nothing at all truly supports that opinion.

In fact nobody has produced any analytics or stats for the this 2019 season that says otherwise.

Historical stats of his greatness canNOT be argued.
He has had a great career in the league. Its is not easy to do what he has to done. I do feel bad for him that Kaeding choked vs Jets or McCree fumble vs Pats. Rivers was not great those games but I thought he did enough.Those 2 times could have been the year.

He isn't the 1st and won't be the last QB who had teamates or other situations derail a chance at a title.
Last couple years Saints had things go off the rails when it appeared Brees was headed to a Superbowl.
None call on PI vs Rams. Defense let up basically a prayer to Keenum and Vikings. Ouch! And dont forget Brees had Kaeding choke a game winning FG vs Jets on Jan 8 2005. That is 3 times Brees teamates got in his way. 2 times in was not even the Chargers, it was Saints. There is no curse. Just what happened.


We could list so many game changing playoff events like the fumble, the drive, wide right, the catch that wasn't, the tuck rule, etc....

As the man who drafted Rivers said...it is what it is.

[Boltjolt]

From Daniel Popper of The Athletic:

After watching the tape, I don’t know how anyone can, in good faith, expect more from a #Chargers offensive line starting two backup tackles and a third-string center. Aside from the three plays, the protection was stellar.

Maybe Popper doesn't know what he's looking at when he watches tape. Anybody can watch tape it's knowing what you're seeing that matters

[dmac_bolt]

i don't see the point of expanding Rivers Not Performing Now to his entire career sucked. thats ridiculous. he has had a fantastic and lengthy career, unfortunately not with a ring. I think his body of work is HOF worthy - its better than Fouts.

but I see something different this year. Its a small sample, maybe its a fluke string and not a trend. but I see him losing games. I see him not winning games he should win. I see a guy who needs a FG flinging lame prayers up for grabs. I see a guy throwing straight at DBs. I even saw him throw it straight into the helmet of a DL player 3 feet from him. I saw it several times earlier in the season, tried to chalk it off to a bad game here, bad game there. its no longer one-off. the last two weeks were painfully glaring. I see a 2019 QB that panicked and puckered when the game was on the line and lost it. its now every time the game is on the line. the games were there to win and he choked each time. While he's choked games here or there before over 16 years, like every QB ever, he's never had a string of choking like 2019.

But I absolutely let him play it out. as i've posted, this is not a SB team anyway and he's otherwise earned that respect. The best way to get better next year is to do worse this year. i know that is heresy, it is not easy to not want your team to win. apologies if the truth is hard.

[jamrock]

I think your post may have been aimed at my statement that Eli did nothing special. I stand by my position. He failed to put up even 20 points in either Super Bowl game. His stats were bad in the first game, but he rallied in the 4th quarter to have an average performance. With the way the Giants defense was playing, a better QB would have had that game long since put away.

Also, I have discussed the defenses Eli played against in the second Super Bowl run (#16, #20, #31 and #32) and how both OT wins in the two runs required zero passing yards from Eli in the OT for the win to be had due to the team already being in FG position when the Giants got possession of the ball. Between that, the helmet catch, the dropped INTs, and the defense getting hot at just the right time, I do not think their has been a luckier QB ever. And no, there is no credit when no credit is due.

Rivers is a much better QB than Eli Manning. That simply is a statistical fact and it is not even a close comparison.

A better QB like Rivers who played the same Patriot team 2 weeks prior and lost putting up 12 points? Or the one that lost the prior season against a weaker Patriot team?> Or the one that lost to the Jets a few years later putting up even fewer points?

Like I said Eli made 2 game deciding plays in those super bowls. you can talk stats all you want but clutch is clutch.

[bartman83642]

May bad.
off by 1 inteception. Thanks for the correction.
I'll re stated my case.
4-0. 6TDs 1int.
4-0. 9TDs. 1int.
8-0. 15TDs 2Ints.
2011 SB with the analytically worst o line in all of football. Id say that he got it done.

He is wrong because he is making the case that Rivers was absolutely perfect and beyond reproach.
everyone to blame but the man with the ball every snap.

Read Pacstud recent post above for a spot on take on River's.

I get what you saying but I don't think his intent was to say Rivers is perfect and beyond reproach. I am guessing he is just pointing out that there is much more than the success and failure of the team than Rivers performance. I agree he put up good numbers on those playoff runs. I wouldn't put too much stock in that one rating on the o-line though as there were other sources that rated them much differently. I think PFF actually had it at 31. But SB nation ranked their line #16 and Football Outsiders had them 28th on run rankings but 6 at pass ranking. Just remember any rankings like these are always very subjective.

QBR doesn't take into account when those mistakes are made. His mistakes are often at the worst possible times.

Form a list of all his back-breaking game ending mistakes.
Form a list of all his last second heroics.

My guess is the first list will be longer than the second.

The stast are the stats. TDs and INTs count the same in the 1st and 4th quarter. That is the problem with ESPN's Total QBR stat (not to be confused with the league's actual QB Rating stat). It tries to assign an arbitrarily greater weight to plays at different times in the game. Lesser QBs like Eli Manning get to try to have 4th quarter comebacks in the Super Bowl because they suck for the first three quarters. Had a healthy Rivers been on the 2007 Giants with the way that defense was playing, I think the Giants would have won by 2-3 TDs. But your approach has no way to capture that, so it is not very valuable or impressive as an approach in my view.

Instead, the closest thing that we have to capture what the QB is actually doing is his stats. Let them do the talking.

The fact is that Rivers has had the Chargers at or above .500 in 10 of 13 seasons as a starter despite having some glaring roster deficiencies over the years. The fact is that Rivers' numbers are elite, meaning that he has games put away that other QBs would not have put away and would, as a result, lose.

The other piece is that the sample size in the playoffs is way too small. I think I have done a very good job of showing the flukish nature of how the Giants won and how no reasonable person should be giving the biggest credit to Eli Manning. And, on the other hand, if I wanted to go through it all, I could show the utterly rotten luck that Rivers had at everything in the playoffs, including the murderers' row of defenses he has been forced to play against and the ridiculous underperformances by some of his teammates that led to losses in games in which Rivers did enough to win. Instead of helmet catches and uncharacteristically great defensive play by a defense that had been average, Rivers got Marlon McCree, Eric Parker, Nate Kaeding and a rash of injuries to his primary supporting cast.

[chargeroo]

Critty I don't dislike Burrow, and I think at worst he's average (Tannehill).

I do NOT see how you see him as a guaranteed superstar.

I don't think anyone is a "guaranteed superstar" but I think Burrow is a great college QB and that makes it more likely that he will be a very good QB in the NFL. His accuracy and few picks make me like him a lot. He came up big in the biggest regular season game this year. Alabama has a very good D but he was able to have a very good game against them, and ...... that was a high pressure game. It showed he can elevate his game when the pressure is on. However, I don't see how we can move up to pick him.

[Critty]

I obviously intended my comment to mean that Rivers was above reproach in terms of being a significant factor as to why the why the team only had a losing 51-61 record over a period of 7 years, not that Rivers was literally perfect on every play. And to be clear, I do think Rivers was a factor as to why the team was 51-61 over the 7 years and not more like 21-91 had he not been the QB.

Got it. I understand your point.
The roster was and is hot garbage. If it wasn't for Rivers they would be the worst team in the league.

I just disagree with your take.