The Phillip Rivers tackle of Cowboys Safety Barry Church
was one of the greatest football plays I can remember.
It says a lot about our quarterback...nice to have
a pro who shows up to play every single down.
Rivers shows what he's made of -- even when he shouldn't
Philip Rivers has to know better. He has to know, as
Falstaff did, that the better part of valor is discretion,
and that strategic cowardice goes quadruple for quarterbacks.
Yet here he was, placing himself and the Chargers’ season at significant risk for dubious benefit; weaving his way through downfield blocking to execute
an open-field, touchdown-saving tackle in a lousy PRESEASON game.
It was madness, and it was marvelous.
The Chargers’ $92 million quarterback plays football’s glamour position with a singular, scary and sometimes
inspiring disregard for self-preservation.
Some guys throw caution to the wind. Rivers takes caution
and fires a deep out when the hurricane flags are flapping.
The clichéd compliment is that he is one of those quarterbacks
with a linebacker’s mentality. The sad fact is that if Antonio Cromartie
were as eager to engage the enemy, the Chargers might
have beaten the Jets last January.
To review: Late in the second quarter of their 16-14 dress rehearsal defeat by the Dallas Cowboys , the
Chargers had moved the ball from their own 6-yard line to the Dallas 18. Needing three yards to sustain the drive on third
down, Rivers completed a short flip to Darren Sproles
, who picked up the required real estate, but was then
separated from the ball by Cowboys’ linebacker Bradie James.
Rookie safety Barry Church claimed the loose ball at
the Dallas 12-yard line and turned toward the Chargers’ goal as a Cowboys’ convoy formed to clear his path. By the time Church
reached midfield, it appeared that the things most
likely to prevent him from scoring a touchdown were,
in order, a clipping penalty, a cramp and an unscheduled
appearance by the Stanford band.
But here was Rivers, drifting toward the north sideline
as a shambling deep safety, picking his way through
the traffic like a pedestrian crossing a freeway, finding
Church and then flattening him.
“I just knew he was going to do it,” Chargers coach NorvTurner said. “I prefer him to not do it in that situation. That being
said, that’s the wrong way to think. He’s a football player. He’s out there playing. Go after it and do what he did.”
Quarterbacks are so critical to the success of a football
team, and are deemed so delicate that they generally
wear red shirts in practice as a signal to teammates
to avoid contact. Since that precaution is unavailable
in actual games, coaches focus an extraordinary amount
of energy on pass protection and pass rush, on guarding
their field general and attacking the other guy’s.
Still, stuff happens. Pittsburgh’s 2006 Super Bowl win was a direct result of the game-saving stop quarterback Ben Roethlisberger made on
Indianapolis’ Nick Harper after a postseason fumble by Jerome Bettis.
That tackle, of course, occurred in the fourth quarter
of a playoff game. That Rivers’ tackle took place in the second quarter of an exhibition
game of no lasting significance speaks to this passer’s passion, his priorities and his remarkably reckless
abandon.
“I don’t know how you can let a guy score,” Rivers said later. “They’re keeping score. Maybe the consequences aren’t as big in preseason as far as wins and losses, but
it’s kind of hard just to pass a guy up there.”
If the effort only delayed Dallas’ first touchdown, and proved to be the quarterback’s final play of the evening, Rivers apparently left
the game undamaged and likely enhanced in the eyes
of his teammates.
For all of his aw-shucks sound bites and his childlike playing persona,
there is a quiet toughness to Rivers that resonates
in the Chargers locker room.
This is the guy, remember, who underwent arthroscopic
knee surgery between playoff games in 2007, a guy who has been sacked 102 times in the NFL without missing a start.
This is the guy the Chargers look to for leadership.
History is full of examples of famous generals who
led from the front, and researchers at Great Britain’s Leeds University found in a recent series of experiments
that successful leaders typically position themselves
at the edge of a crowd rather than in the middle.
The same management style that worked so well for Alexander
the Great and William the Conqueror has since been
adopted by Rivers the Reckless. He should know better,
but it works. See source.
