INDIANAPOLIS – There’s a cavernous house sitting on acres of land in south Alabama, all dolled up for Christmas with decorations galore, but this week, nobody’s home.
Instead, the Rivers clan on Monday piled into the rental home that Philip Rivers, the Colts starting quarterback for two weeks and counting, secured earlier this month in the midst of his hasty move from the couch to the huddle, jumping at the opportunity to help a longtime buddy and beloved franchise that found itself in dire need of a quick-fix at quarterback with a season on the brink.
Chaotic Christmases aren’t exactly new territory in the Rivers household. The 44-year-old quarterback, who came out of a five-year retirement from the NFL this December in the days after Colts starting quarterback Daniel Jones tore his right Achilles tendon Dec. 7 in Jacksonville, spent 10 of his 17 years in the NFL standing on an NFL sideline somewhere between Dec. 24-26 and only one of those 10 games was at home.
This Christmas week includes a home game but involved his wife, 10 kids, grandson, parents and brother rolling into town for the Colts’ Monday Night Football loss to the 49ers. All the family is likely to stay at least through Sunday’s home game against Jacksonville.
“They’re all kinda taking it day-by-day, but they plan to be here until we decide otherwise,” Rivers said with a chuckle of his jam-packed temporary home this week, which he said has still been outfitted with decorations and a tree as if the Rivers family was back home in Fairhope, Ala. “We’re making it work. Everyone’s finding a place to lay down at night. We’re good.
“And we’ve got a lonely house back home with all our Christmas decorations up and none of us there, but they’re excited to be here. It’s kinda an impromptu Christmas vacation for the family. We’ll go to Christmas mass either tonight or in the morning and then celebrate as a family at home and have everybody here and then gear back into game week as we get to the weekend. None of us had this on the calendar three weeks ago, but it’s the way we handled Christmas for 17 years. It’ll be awesome.”
The Colts quarterback is coming off a resurgent performance in his second game with the Colts under the bright lights of a primetime TV slot, where the 44-year-old threw for 277 yards on 23-of-35 passing for two touchdowns, one pick and 27 points. The issue? Eight days after throwing his first passes of any meaning in nearly five years in Seattle, logging just 120 passing yards and one touchdown, mustering just 16 points and losing in the final minute of the game, the Colts were clobbered Monday night. A defense that received praise the week prior for holding Sam Darnold and the Seahawks to a touchdown-less 18 points at Lumen Field gave up 440 yards of total offense and five passing touchdowns to San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy.
Despite two games with winnable performances from their stand-in quarterback, the Colts have found ways to lose both of Rivers’ starts, adding onto what is now a five-game losing streak for a team that at the season’s halfway point had the best record in the NFL (7-1).
Entering Week 17, the Colts find themselves two full games out of the AFC playoff picture, needing to win out against divisional foes Jacksonville and Houston, along with an additional Texans loss and other help from around the league. The Athletic’s Playoff Predictor gives the Colts a 1% chance of snapping a four-year postseason-less streak.
“Those percentages are done with computers, and we know there’s real humans involved out there, and in any game, anything can happen across the league,” Rivers said Wednesday. “I think our focus and what I seem to gather just from the locker room – obviously I haven’t been here long – but we just need to win a football game and keep it as simple as that.
“Those opportunities are dwindling to be able to go out and execute and put a complete game together in all phases of the game. We know all the scenarios out there, but those scenarios involve us winning, and that’s the only thing we can control, so I think that’ll be best for us, just to keep it simple and keep the focus right there.”
Unfortunately for the Colts – though it’s a product of their own doing – their postseason destiny could be sealed before they take the field for Sunday’s 1 p.m. duel with the Jaguars – winners of six-straight. The Texans will face the Chargers needing a win to keep the Colts from being formally eliminated from the playoffs.
There’s a certain level of irony that the Chargers – where Rivers played 16 of his first 17 years in the league before he joined the Colts for the 2020 campaign and the team he joined on a ceremonial one-day contract this past summer to retire with the team that drafted him – holds the playoff hopes of his new team in its hands for the next 72 hours. Rivers said the family TV in his rental home will be locked in on that Saturday late-afternoon game as a house full of lifelong Chargers fans turn back the clock six years.
“I’ve never been one to say, ‘I don’t want to see (what’s going on).’ It’s like being a fan. You feeling like if you’re pulling for them – and that’ll be an easy (team) to pull for – you’ll be pulling for them, and it’ll feel like you’re helping them out a little bit,” he said.
“(The Chargers) have been doing pretty good,” Rivers added. “So I just hope they keep going.
“But we’ve got to do this one game at a time. I know we’re hungry for a win – shoot, I know I am as well, and I haven’t been through this whole process with these guys all season. But I told my wife last night, ‘We need to win a game.’ And she said, ‘I know.’”
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How Philip Rivers’ family is spending Christmas in Indiana: ‘An impromptu Christmas vacation’
Reporting by Nathan Brown, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
