Philip Rivers signed on with the Indianapolis Colts on a Wednesday last week. He started for them at QB on Sunday. All after being retired for five full years. Heck, the guy was a Hall of Fame semifinalist for the 2026 class. Now, that five-year clock restarts again.
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But Rivers is paying no mind to that. Obviously, he’s still got that competitive itch inside him. That fire that keeps him pushing. And while he didn’t look his physical best against the Seattle Seahawks in his 2025 debut in Week 15, he nearly got the team a win after engineering a scoring drive in the final minute.
He went 18-for-27 for 120 yards, one TD, and one INT. It wasn’t a world-beating performance, but it was solid and reliable. And it has other elderly QB statesmen talking about whether they could make such a return, even if they don’t necessarily want to, like Rivers obviously did. When asked on his Inner Circle podcast this week if he could come back for one game and one game only, Matt Ryan said he could, but that he wouldn’t.
“Would I do it? No. I would not do it. Could I do it? Of course. I feel like every player has in their mind, like if you told me I had to go out there and hand the ball off 35 times, and then I’m gonna throw it 25 times. And it’s quick game and it’s screens. Of course, in your mind, you’re like yes. But you have to want to.”
Ryan went on to talk about how that mental drive is arguably more important than the physical side for an aging QB looking to make a comeback.
“I thought his comments before and after the game about basically are all the cards stacked against me? Of course they are. And it’s a lesson to my kids: you’ve gotta go for it. And I love hearing that from him. And I love Philip, I’ve known him for a long time, I’ve got a ton of respect for him. But I love that mindset of, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ And that’s why he was the player he was. I don’t have any desire to do that.”
Ryan was also unsure if his body would be able to hold up in an NFL setting. But for one game, we believe he could do it. He and his buddies talked about how they still train very hard every week, so we would expect Ryan to be in pretty good physical shape.
Philip Rivers played better than Matt Ryan in the final season with Colts
It’s also worth noting that Matt Ryan is four years younger than Philip Rivers and played his final NFL season two years later than Rivers in 2022. Funny enough, they both finished their careers with one-year sojourns in Indianapolis.
But if a 44-year-old guy who hasn’t played a competitive down in over 1,800 days can do it, surely a fit 40-year-old who is under three years removed from his final NFL pass could do it too?
However, Rivers still looked pretty good in his final season in 2020 with the Colts at age 39. Ryan did not look so good in his final year with the Colts in 2022 at age 37. Rivers went 11-5, took the team to the playoffs, threw for over 4,100 yards, put up a solid 24-11 TD-INT ratio, and finished with a top 15 passer rating (97.0).
Ryan, meanwhile, managed just a 4-7-1 record, barely threw for 3,000 yards, threw nearly as many picks as TDs (14 TDs, 13 picks), and put up the second-worst passer rating of his career (83.9). Maybe Ryan had already given up on the game by then, which confirms a comeback in 2025 or beyond is an impossibility.
