Throughout his long, 13 year career in the NFL, Pro Bowl quarterback Philip Rivers has been heavily mistreated by the San Diego Chargers organization that acquired him during the 2004 NFL Draft. While the Chargers have done their best to provide Rivers with offensive weapons throughout his career, they have struggled heavily with putting together a solid defensive unit to help the five time Pro Bowler lead the Chargers to a Super Bowl. After all of these years of keeping Rivers from blossoming on the national stage and failing to provide the supporting cast to help bring a championship to San Diego, it is time for the quarterback to demand to be traded away to an organization that is all-in on winning a championship in the next few years.
Philip Rivers Needs to Leave the San Diego Chargers
Offensive Weapons
If there is one thing the Chargers organization has done well at, it is providing Philip Rivers with plenty of offensive weapons at his disposal. From future Hall of Famers in LaDainian Tomlinson and Antonio Gates to players like Vincent Jackson and Michael Turner, the Chargers have provided Rivers with plenty of weapons to form a top-tier offense. Even now, the Chargers have remained focused on improving their offense. In recent drafts, the use of early-round picks on players like Keenan Allen, Melvin Gordon, and Hunter Henry show the Chargers are still trying to provide Rivers with the best opportunity to succeed on offense.
However, the main problem on offense has been the lack of a solid offensive line. Throughout his career, Rivers has never had a truly dominant offensive line, and the past few seasons the Chargers offensive line has been ranked as one of the worst in the league. This season, the Chargers offensive line came into 2016 as the 29th ranked unit (by Pro Football Focus). With a quarterback who has put up numbers that, with a Super Bowl win or two, are close to Hall of Fame production, the Chargers should have done a much better job with protecting Rivers throughout his career.
Poor Defensive Play
In the history of the NFL, it has been shown that a great offense can only take a team so far. Examples like the 2013 Denver Broncos and 2011 New England Patriots stand as two of the more recent teams to lose deep in the playoffs, despite having historically great offenses. For the Chargers, examples like their 2006 and 2007 seasons prove to be in line with the trend. These teams, led by great offenses of Rivers, Gates, and Tomlinson, lost in the AFC Championship Game in back-to-back seasons due to a defense that simply couldn’t stop opposing offenses. In 2006, the Chargers defense allowed 38 points to the eventual Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts. In 2007, the Chargers allowed a more respectable 21 points to the 16-0 Patriots, who went on to lose Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants.
While this should have been a signal to the Chargers front office to pursue improvements on defense, their attempts at doing so were not successful. Even since, the Chargers defense has only been getting worse, and in spite of drafting players like Jason Verrett and Joey Bosa in the first round, it simply hasn’t been enough to allow the Chargers to have an elite defense.
In the end, if Philip Rivers wants to win a Super Bowl ring before his playing career is over, he must leave the Chargers. While the idea of Rivers leaving San Diego is extremely unlikely, at 34 years old, he is only a few more years away from retirement. As harsh as it may sound, it is time for Rivers to move on from the Chargers and go to a team that is prepared to win in the near future, rather than continue to play for a rebuilding team that is wasting the latter half of his career.
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