The Colts Signing Philip Rivers Sends a Strong Message to the Locker Room

The wild swing may not pay off, but Indianapolis isn’t wrong for trying. Plus, what’s wrong with the Chiefs and a check-in on Cam Ward’s development.

The Colts have signed quarterback Philip Rivers following Daniel Jones’s Achilles injury. / Rich Barnes-Imagn Images

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1. Indianapolis Colts
2. Kansas City Chiefs
3. Matt Campbell
4. Jacksonville Jaguars
5. Tennessee Titans
6. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 
7. Cincinnati Bengals
8. Philadelphia Eagles
9. Los Angeles Chargers
10. Officiating

It’s Tuesday, with a decisive Week 15 ahead. Time to empty out some notes …

Indianapolis Colts

The Colts signed 44-year-old Philip Rivers on Tuesday.

He’s on the practice squad, but of course, the team signed him with the intention of getting him on the field. They know he can still throw because they saw him do it on Monday night at their facility. What they don’t—and Rivers himself probably doesn’t—know is whether he’ll hold up physically. Can he move well enough to protect himself? Can he get up after repeated hits, which will be worse/more frequent if he can’t move as well?

Indianapolis knows what it’s signing up for here. Most quarterbacks will tell you that they can throw the ball at an NFL level into their 50s. It’s the other stuff that goes first and leads to the end of most careers. The other stuff, of course, is the factors that the Colts couldn’t possibly have an answer for until Rivers gets into practices and games.

As I see it, this was a risk worth taking. It sends a strong message to a locker room that was finally turning the playoff corner and becoming a real contender.

The other players in that locker room saw Daniel Jones play through a fractured fibula, then tear his Achilles. They know Riley Leonard, who showed himself to be a gamer last Sunday, will have to fight through a knee injury to play this week in Seattle. They’re aware that Anthony Richardson, who wasn’t all that reliable before his injury, is still working his way back from orbital surgery. So the team knows what it’s up against.

Getting Rivers gives the players hope and shows that the organization is doing everything it can to patch up a potentially disastrous situation at the most critical position on the field.

Will it amount to more than being remembered as a wild swing? It might not. But given the circumstances, it’s worth a try.

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Kansas City Chiefs

What’s wrong with the Chiefs?

It’s the most common question I’ve gotten this year. For a while, I’d tell everyone who asked to give it time, that it’s a long season, that Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes & Co. would figure it out.

Well, time is running short, if it hasn’t already run out in Kansas City.

The Chiefs are 6–7. With four weeks left in the season, they’ve already been eliminated from the AFC West race, which snaps their streak of nine consecutive division titles. They’re still in the league’s top 10, albeit bottom of the top 10, in total offense, defense and point differential (plus 63). That tells the story of a team that’s not necessarily broken, but hasn’t been quite good enough to pull this season from the fire.

Let’s focus on the obvious. The offense led by Mahomes and Reid has forever been the Chiefs’ fail-safe when things have gone off-kilter.

Sunday’s 20–10 loss to the Texans was a microcosm of the problem. In a nutshell, Houston didn’t need to expose itself to risk to either stop the run or get to Mahomes. The Texans sent pressure, meaning more than four players on only three occasions, yet registered two sacks and eight quarterback hits, with a front that had little trouble getting home. They routinely ran out of light boxes—and the Chiefs rushed for 126 yards, but 59 of them were on seven scrambles from Mahomes, leaving 67 yards on 22 carries from the actual run game.

Mahomes running as much as he did is a clear indication that he and the offense don’t have the answers they’re used to having. Mahomes has said he likes to keep that element of his game in the garage until the playoffs, to save miles on his body.

From there, this becomes simple math. The lack of an efficient run game allowed the Texans to get to Mahomes with four rushers, and Houston defensive coordinator Matt Burke was able to play his back seven straight up against the Chiefs’ tight ends and receivers. That makes it more difficult for a group that’s not what it was five years ago to find space.

Hollywood Brown and Xavier Worthy can run, but they aren’t as versatile as Tyreek Hill. Travis Kelce’s not running away from anyone, and Rashee Rice is highly talented as a slot and run-after-catch player, but has consistency issues. All of which is why the Chiefs have struggled to create chunk plays, outside of schemed-up shots to Tyquan Thornton.

That leaves Mahomes to either engineer 14- or 16-play drives, or pull rabbits out of his hat and create explosive plays off scrambles. The recent problems with drops have only exacerbated the issue, creating more long-yardage situations. All of that impacts the defense, too, with more three-and-outs and deficits to play from.

Can all of this be fixed? Again, if anyone can do it, it’s Reid and Mahomes, and better health along an injury-riddled offensive line would certainly help.

While I’d never bet against those two, there isn’t much time left to figure this out.

The Chiefs are on the outside looking in after falling to 6–7. / Amy Kontras-Imagn Images

Matt Campbell

Watching Matt Campbell’s introductory press conference at Penn State was a good reminder of why NFL teams have had real interest in him over the past five years.

He came off as confident, smart, commanding and relentlessly genuine.

The leader that he’s shown himself to be is what piqued the NFL’s interest. So I went back in my notebook, and dug a little more into the Lions’ interest in him in 2021, in the weeks before Detroit wound up hiring Dan Campbell.

As we reported at the time, the Lions spoke with Matt Campbell a couple of times in late 2020 and were preparing to fly to Florida to meet the then-Iowa State coach after his bowl game. Then, he had a change of heart and pulled his name from consideration. He made the call because he had the core of a great team prepared to return the following year, with some upperclassmen telling him they’d stay and not go to the NFL if he stayed.

That said, the interest was mutual and genuine. Matt Campbell has certainly investigated making a move to the NFL, and the Lions had connections to him. Detroit exec Chris Spielman shares a hometown (Massillon, Ohio) with Campbell and sent his son to play for the coach when he was still at Toledo a little over a decade ago.

And the more the Lions researched it, the more they liked Matt Campbell. He was among then-Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell, then-Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Ohio State’s Ryan Day as the college coaches they’d identified as program builders, the kind who served as coach, GM and CEO for their teams.

Detroit wound up loving Matt Campbell’s ability to identify two- and three-star talent, and develop it to where Iowa State had a legit NFL pipeline. In hiring him, they could have had an edge in college scouting, the way the Seahawks once did with Pete Carroll, given Campbell’s institutional knowledge of college players through recruiting, coaching and scouting against so many of them. Knowing that Matthew Stafford wanted a trade, finding a guy who could help hit on draft picks was key for Detroit.

Anyway, the match didn’t happen, and everything worked out O.K. for everyone in the long run. Matt Campbell’s where he’s at now, and Detroit found another Campbell who’s pretty good, too.

But all of this does leave you wondering if, down the line, the NFL’s going to take another look at a guy who’s impressive in so many different ways.

Jacksonville Jaguars

 Hat tip to Jaguars defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile.

The 43-year-old Energizer bunny of an assistant was a bit of a gamble for Liam Coen to take back in January. Yes, he had five years of experience as an NFL position coach working under Brian Flores, Vic Fangio and Jeff Hafley. Still, no one was kicking the door down to give him his first shot at play-calling since coaching at Don Bosco Prep in North Jersey a decade and a half ago. It took guts for Coen to make the hire, when a lot of people would’ve advocated bringing in a former head coach to fill that role.

Jacksonville is 11th in points allowed, after finishing 27th in that category last year. The Jags are also 11th in total defense, after landing 31st there in 2024. They’re tied for second in the league in takeaways (23), after being dead last in that category with nine last year.

They’re better in about every way, enough so to generate at least the possibility that Campanile will get some consideration for head-coaching jobs next month.

“He’s been awesome,” star edge rusher Josh Hines-Allen, who has seven sacks and had a safety on Sunday. “He lights us up every single day, every time he speaks. He speaks with confidence, he speaks with love that he has for the players and coaches. He makes my job a lot of fun.”

If Campanile winds up being a legit candidate in January, it’ll be because his unit’s energy, in which they play, jumps off the screen. So maybe, then, he could bring that sort of play-style and cohesion to both sides of the ball somewhere else.

Tennessee Titans

It’s been a while since we’ve looked at the progress of No. 1 pick Cam Ward, so I figured I’d ask Titans interim coach Mike McCoy for an update when we talked the other day.

McCoy hasn’t been around him quite as much over the past seven game weeks, having taken over as interim coach in early October. But he’s been intentional about continuing to spend time with him regularly, and McCoy likes what he’s seen.

“He’s getting better every day,” McCoy said. “He has a burning desire to be great, and he’s learning. We’ll sit down sometime during the week, I’ll have some plays from the game, and go over them. Not the entire game, just some things to point out to him. He wants to be coached hard. He’s a competitor. He wants to play perfect, which is never going to happen, but you can see his improvement on a weekly basis.

“He’s going to make some mistakes, and it’s like ‘mistakes are on me, don’t worry about it buddy, you just keep plugging along.’ I'll take the hit for any mistake you make, and we'll learn from it and go from there. He’s learning how to play quarterback in the NFL. Two weeks ago, when he had the six carries, everyone went crazy here, but that’s just learning to take off when you can. This was the first interception he’s had in a long time, so it’s not a big deal. But I love the way he responded from it.”

Anthony Campanile has played a significant role in the Jaguaurs’ 9–4 start. / Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 

Jason Pierre-Paul’s return at 36 years old won’t get the attention Rivers’s does—and I’m not arguing it should—but coming back after more than a year away is impressive. The Buccaneers love Pierre-Paul, and view his acquisition in 2018, for his leadership as much as his play, as a turning point for a franchise that was a couple of years away from starting to win at the highest level.

Cincinnati Bengals

Trey Hendrickson has probably played his final snap in Cincinnati after making $29 million this year for four sacks in seven games. The Bengals had grown frustrated with the drama around Hendrickson the past couple of years, and Hendrickson had grown tired of having to fight for a contract correction. But they made it work to keep pursuing a few common goals. And now that we’re here, it seems like the divorce probably came a year too late.

Philadelphia Eagles

The Eagles’ struggles look like they are, for the most part, centered on an inability to create the sort of identity they had last year on offense. They aren’t dominating the line of scrimmage like they did, leaving the run game less effective, and putting more on Jalen Hurts to carry the team. That said, the defense is still playing well, giving Philly a chance to advance in the NFC bracket.

Los Angeles Chargers

Shout-out to Justin Herbert, essentially running the Chargers’ offense with one hand. He won’t get enough credit for what he’s done this year, winning without his two starting tackles, and with an injury-ravaged set of running backs. Omarion Hampton made a difference on Monday, and should going forward. And that should give Jim Harbaugh’s crew a better shot. But if not for Herbert, given what the Chargers have dealt with, the team might not have a chance at this stage of the game at all.

Officiating

After Isaiah Likely’s catch/non-catch on Sunday, it seems like we have to relitigate the catch rules again. Which … I have no interest in doing. Sorry.

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