FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Philip Rivers spent 17 seasons throwing passes in the NFL, retired, moved his family to Baldwin County and took over a small Catholic high school’s football program. Then, five years later, he went back and did it again for a month.
Last season the Indianapolis Colts lost their top two quarterbacks to injury. Rivers, who had spent his final NFL season in Indianapolis and knew the coaches and the offense, stepped away from St. Michael Catholic temporarily and started three games for the Colts, then dressed for one more as a backup. Almost nobody saw it coming — including, by his own account, him.
He is back on the Cardinals’ sideline this fall. Ahead of the season, at Baldwin County Football Media Day, Rivers spent more than half an hour talking about the detour, the roster he has to rebuild and what it was like to watch his oldest son get recruited.
‘It was a little bonus ball’
Rivers does not seem to regard the comeback as unfinished business so much as an unexpected gift.
“Yeah, definitely unexpected,” he said. “It was a little bonus ball that was a lot of fun. I wish we would have won a game or two and I would have thrown one or two less interceptions, but it was fun to be back out there with them.”
Asked whether his playing days are now closed for good, he did not hedge much: “Yeah, I think so. It’s been shut in my mind. But it was a fun four weeks.”
What he brought back to Fairhope was not a scheme or a technique. It was a feeling he thought he had already made peace with losing.
“I think the biggest thing for me was just getting that feeling of being a teammate again and realizing how much you really loved it,” Rivers said. “That was my favorite part of playing. Then you get to go be one again after five years out and had already been at peace with never being a teammate again.”
He listed the details he missed: the locker room, the huddle, the Saturday night meetings, the cold tub with two offensive linemen and a defensive back, the dining hall, the weight room, the film study.
“That’s the biggest thing I try to tell these guys until they probably get tired of me telling them — don’t miss this,” he said. “Football ends for all of us at some point. Thankfully enough, I got a taste of it at 44, but it’s going to end for all of us at some point. For most of these high school football players, it’s going to end when they’re done playing high school. It goes fast, and it’s hard to realize that when you’re 16, 17, 18.”
A roster with holes to fill
St. Michael has been one of the most successful small-school programs in the state over the past two seasons, but the 2025 team graduated 18 seniors — and not the kind who mostly held clipboards.
“We had a lot of guys that played a lot and a lot of seniors that contributed quite a bit,” Rivers said.
Defensively, the Cardinals lost two starters in the secondary, inside linebacker and team captain Nick Russo, and a couple of defensive linemen. Offensively, they lost four senior offensive linemen, their top three pass catchers — Brody Jones, Tucker Tomlinson and Braden Smith — and leading rusher Noah Moss.
“I don’t know that we’re such a young team, but we definitely don’t have as much experience as we’ve had in years past,” he said. “The one thing about our guys I’m trying to remind them is that we’re going to be a better team in week eight than we are going to be in week zero. And hopefully we don’t have any bumps along the road. But we may.”
The standard they built
The two-year run behind that senior class was remarkable for a program of St. Michael’s size. Over a stretch of more than 1,000 days, the Cardinals lost to exactly one opponent — state champion Jackson — three separate times.
“Our guys feel like there’s been a standard set and an expectation that we’re going to find a way to win every Friday night,” Rivers said. “It’s been a fun two-year run for sure. It’s been a fun five-year run.”
Coaching your own quarterback
Rivers spoke at length about his son Gunner, the senior quarterback and N.C. State commit who entered the season as the top Class of 2027 prospect in Alabama. The most obvious change was physical.
“He’s probably put on 20 pounds from last year,” Rivers said. “I think he was 228 the other day when he got on the scale. We’re talking about we’re going to have to tweak his shoulder pads and get a different pair. When you get this custom shoulder pad fitted for a quarterback, you don’t expect him to be 228.”
The bigger difference, he said, is what happens before the snap.
“You’re talking about 35-plus high school football games he’s been in. That’s a lot of games,” Rivers said. “We’ve got young guys, inexperienced, and it’s almost like they’re all looking back and he’s like, you got this, you got this. He knows where everybody’s supposed to be. Rather than us having to talk about all these different checks, he sees it and makes those checks.”
Staying out of the recruitment
Rivers described the recruiting process as genuinely enjoyable as a football person and considerably more delicate as a father. The family visited Texas, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama and N.C. State, and talked extensively with Kentucky.
“Navigating as a dad, the thing I try to keep reminding myself is it doesn’t matter who I like to talk ball with — it matters who he meshes with and who he feels like he’s connected with,” Rivers said. “So I tried my best to stay out of it in terms of steering it.”
Eventually he told Gunner that spring visits require planning, and then let it sit.
“About a week later he came to me. He said, ‘Hey, Dad, I want to go to N.C. State.’ I said, good. If you’re good, I’m good,” Rivers said. “Obviously I was fired up that he chose N.C. State, but by all means, I wasn’t pushing it that way. I was glad that he got to come to that on his own.”
What the schedule demands
Rivers was clear that the nationally televised season opener against Battle Ground Academy — which St. Michael lost 41-18, with Gunner leaving in the first quarter with a knee injury — was never the point of the season.
“Our season doesn’t hinge on that game. We have a bye week after that,” he said. “So we’ll be able to kind of reset everything and get ourselves ready for region play. We jump right in with UMS, McGill and St. Paul’s back-to-back-to-back. Those are three formidable, traditional, well-coached teams. Starting off your region like that, there’s no time to warm up. You better be ready to go or you’ll be fighting an uphill battle after that.”
Region play opens Friday, Sept. 4 at home against UMS-Wright.