Responding to a report that he reached out to the Dolphins and 49ers about making a comeback last season, Philip Rivers said he never reached out to anyone, but teams did reach out to him, only for Rivers to tell those teams no thanks.
Rivers told AL.com that teams checked in with him in 2022 to see if he might consider coming out of retirement, but he has no intention of playing again.
“I heard from a couple of teams just kind of checking in,” he said. “I didn’t contact anyone, and I’m not going anywhere. I think maybe some teams, with some guys going down, may have been just looking for a contingency plan, but nothing came of it.”
Rivers did not name the couple of teams that checked in with him, but specifically said he never heard anything from the Dolphins. Both the Dolphins and 49ers started third-string rookie quarterbacks in the playoffs as a result of injuries, which is why they might have made sense as a destination for Rivers.
Rivers, who played his final season in 2020 with the Colts after 16 seasons with the Chargers, says there was a time when he thought he could have come back and contributed but at this point he thinks it’s safe to say his NFL career is over.
“I think in my mind in the last couple of years if a team had needed me, I might have had six or eight games left in me, but I’m not going into this fall thinking the same,” he said. “I think it’s done.”