Philip Rivers Quotes

Understanding the intentions of a play is so key because you can block a guy into the running back if you don't know how the play is supposed to work or where the back is going to come out.

I haven't seen a new football play since I was in high school. You have just so many holes in a line and you have eleven men playing, and there's only so many ways you can go through those holes, and those ways have been used for forty, fifty years.

Like I always say, it's not how many great plays you make; it's how few bad ones you make. I know fans, and even some losing coaches, are enamored with long pass completions or the great run plays, but that doesn't offset the interception or the fumble.

The wide receiver position is such a complex position.

You have to learn the playbook inside and out. You have to learn code words for each play. You have to learn defenses.

There's a lot to it, but the bottom line as a receiver is to run the right route, get open and make plays.

That was part of coaching: to teach your receivers how to get free.

I love to hit my little five- to 10-yard cut, and that's what I try to do. And I think that's kind of been my game.

I want to know what coverage it is every single time. I want to line up and be able to read what the defense is trying to do to me so I can get open.

I know where I'm supposed to be at the time of the snap. Now, where the play dictates I'm going to go is a different story.

You've got one football and a lot of times, defenses dictate where the ball goes.

I think that people that don't really understand the game of football and are just fans that think people just show up on Saturday and go, I don't think they understand the work that we put in here and what our schemes are and what we're trying to do.

You don't beat football teams like Nebraska with a trick play. They're too well-coached, too well-disciplined.

If your quarterback can't make plays in certain situations for you to win games, he's not getting the job done.

It's all about controlling the huddle one play at a time and knowing my assignment, knowing my progression and where I've got to go with the ball.

When you play against a Spanish team, especially Madrid, it is quite an open game.

I'm going to play the quarterback position the way coaches install the plays; I'm going to go through the reads just like they install it.

Depending on the point in the game and what's necessary, if you can deliver the play, whatever that is - heck, if it's a screen - and you get a guy open, and he scores a big basket for you, that gives me as much of a charge as anything.

College has become a wide-open game - a lot of short passes, quick passes. Then you go to the pros and it's a whole different ballgame - things are happening faster, the patterns have to be more precise. Getting off the line of scrimmage is more difficult.

Put on the game tape. The game tape speaks volumes because I'm in live action, I'm out there making reads, going through progressions, redirection protection, signaling hot routes, getting the offense in and out of the right play.

I used to play against a high school football team that always used to run the single wing. And eventually, other teams figured out that they ran the single wing. And so they prepared for it. The Democrats are stuck running the single wing.

I think as a play-caller, you have to just go out there, rely on your guys that you have that are out there, rely on the fact that they have ability. And as a quarterback, you have to go out there and just go through your reads.

I never feel like I'm in a rush. I'm controlling the pace. If I have the ball and hit the hole right now and get 3 yards, I feel like I can be patient, work for something, knowing I can still get the 3. It's something that's hard to be coached on. I just feel I've perfected it over time.

You don't want to give the defensive back any signals about what route you're going to run.

We have always found it easier, and still do, when the opponent plays football as well, when they don't just think in defensive terms, don't just sit inside their penalty box. It's just nicer when the opponent plays football.