‘Hopefully He Can Go Another 16,’ Philip Rivers' Endorsement of Justin Herbert Is About More Than a Handoff

When Philip Rivers left the Los Angeles Chargers, he had already outlasted four head coaches, three general managers, one relocation, and a decade of playoff heartbreak without ever missing a start of his own doing. He made the most of it and came back for more in the winter of 2025, briefly un-retiring to make two starts for the Indianapolis Colts after Daniel Jones went down with an Achilles tear.

Rivers spent 16 seasons with the Chargers, starting from 2004, the year San Diego traded Eli Manning to the Giants on draft day and took Rivers in his place, through the franchise’s final season in San Diego and into its early years as a Los Angeles team.

When he left for Indianapolis after the 2019 season, he did so as the franchise’s all-time leader in every major passing category. 59,271 yards, 397 touchdown passes, 4,908 completions, and 123 quarterback wins. Across his career, including his season with the Colts and his brief 2025 return, he finished with 63,440 passing yards, sixth in NFL history, and 421 touchdown passes, also sixth all-time.

Then he sat down for an interview and talked about Justin Herbert. His point was not really about Herbert as an individual talent, even though Herbert’s arm and production already justify the hype. It was about organizational stability, about the rare luxury of knowing who your quarterback is going to be for the next decade and a half. Rivers understands that better than almost anyone because he spent 16 years embodying it for the Chargers.

1. Why Philip Rivers Prays Justin Herbert Becomes the Next Aaron Rodgers

In modern football, quarterback stability is not merely a roster advantage. It becomes part of a franchise’s identity. Green Bay moved from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers with almost unnatural seamlessness, turning one generation of elite quarterback play directly into another. Cleveland, meanwhile, became the cautionary tale every organization fears: endless resets, endless draft swings, endless seasons spent searching for competence at the game’s most important position. Teams spend decades trying to escape quarterback chaos because once instability starts, it infects everything else, coaching staffs, locker rooms, expectations and even fan psychology. Many franchise quarterbacks struggle with succession because replacement feels personal. Rivers framed Herbert’s success as validation that the Chargers avoided collapse after his departure.

2. 30 Years of QB Dominance: The Favre-Rodgers Blueprint Justin Herbert Must Now Replicate

Rivers invoked Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers for a reason. The Packers’ quarterback succession, Favre from 1992 through 2007, Rodgers from 2008 through 2022, produced three decades of continuity, sustained competitiveness, and a framework where the franchise’s identity was never in question no matter what else changed around it. Both quarterbacks won at least one Super Bowl. Both were named league MVP. The team never spent a meaningful stretch wondering who played the most important position on the field. Jordan Love is now in his second full season as Green Bay’s starter, which means the Packers are attempting to extend that lineage into a third consecutive era. The early returns have been mixed but not discouraging. For the purposes of Rivers’ argument, the structure is the point. Two quarterbacks, 30 years, a franchise that never had to run a competing-quarterback carousel. The Chargers are attempting to replicate that in Los Angeles, and the evidence from Herbert’s first five-plus seasons suggests the foundation is real. Herbert was the sixth overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft out of Oregon, a move made possible by Rivers’ exit. He finished that rookie year with 4,336 passing yards and 31 touchdowns, a record-setting debut, and was named Offensive Rookie of the Year. The production has been consistent since: he has thrown for 4,000 or more yards in four of his six professional seasons and has not missed significant time to injury. In 2025, playing behind one of the most injury-ravaged offensive lines in the league, he was still 66.4 percent on 512 attempts for 3,727 yards and 26 touchdowns, rushed for a career-best 498 yards, and took 54 sacks, second-most in the NFL, without losing the starting job or visibly breaking down.

3. Super Bowl or Bust: Is Justin Herbert’s 0-3 Playoff Record The Only Stat That Matters?

Rivers’ endorsement was an acknowledgment of something incomplete. The Chargers finished 11-5 in Harbaugh’s second season and reached the playoffs for the second consecutive year. They played the New England Patriots in the Wild Card round on Sunday night and lost 16-3, with Herbert sacked six times, unable to find consistent passing rhythm, producing the lowest scoring output of his postseason career. He is now 0-for-3 in playoff games, a ledger that includes the infamous 27-0 blown lead against Jacksonville in January 2023 and a four-interception performance in Houston in January 2025. The regular-season resume has been consistent enough to establish Herbert as a top-tier quarterback by conventional measure. The postseason record has been, by any fair accounting, poor. Rivers himself went 5-7 in the playoffs during his 16 Charger seasons, reaching the AFC Championship Game once, in January 2008. He never won a Super Bowl. The comparison between predecessors does not entirely favor Rivers in this department either, which may be why he chose to frame his endorsement around stability and continuity rather than championship credentials. The Packers model he cited worked because Favre and Rodgers each won a Super Bowl. That is the full version of what Rivers is asking Herbert to aspire to, even if he did not say it directly. The Chargers have a quarterback under contract through 2029, a head coach in his third year, and a new offensive coordinator in Mike McDaniel, who was hired this winter to replace the fired Greg Roman. Whether the next several seasons produce what the Packers model produced is still, as Rivers said, a bold pick. He is pulling for that outcome anyway. For a man who gave 16 years to the same sideline and walked away without a ring, there is something both generous about rooting for the person who got the chance he did not.

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