Did anyone actually watch Colts quarterback Philip Rivers play football last week?
Checking in with the national media and the hellscape that is social media, it sure doesn’t seem like it.
If we’re judging Rivers versus every other 44-year-old grandfather, then his performance was a miracle. He wasn’t taken off the field on a cart. He nearly won the contest. What a story.
But if we’re judging him compared to other NFL quarterbacks, we’re deep in Zach Wilson’s rookie year territory.
It was woeful, woeful stuff.
Rivers’ off-the-couch performance against Seattle last Sunday felt less like watching a professional NFL quarterback and more like witnessing what would happen if a rich guy bought his way into an NFL starting quarterback job.
We are talking about a quarterback who quite literally looked like he was throwing a weighted ball on every single down. The velocity? Gone. The mechanics? Imagine a glitchy Madden animation. (Not that Rivers has ever looked normal throwing, but at least he used to, somehow, deliver a pretty ball.)
He couldn’t move much, and the little he did appeared agonizing.
You can count the times he looked past his first progression on one hand.
The Colts had to abandon their entire offense to facilitate him. The best under-center team in the NFL couldn’t run any plays from under center because, well, Rivers had a hard time with handoffs out of a shotgun formation — he was never reaching the mesh point all the way back there.
The Colts ran a high school offense against the Seahawks. Expect the same on Monday night.
The folks with money on the line see it. On Dec. 2, the Colts were -300, per FanDuel, to make the playoffs. Today? They are -1600 to miss them.
If the 49ers cannot handle this — a team running a prep scheme led by a high school football coach at quarterback — then we need to have a very different conversation about this season.
Because if the Niners play a serious brand of football, this should be a 15-to-20-point blowout, even with the game on the road. If they let Rivers hang around? That’s a disqualifying event for the remainder of the season.
Here are three predictions for Monday’s matchup against the ghost of quarterbacks past:
The “high school offense” hits a wall
The Colts’ only hope to win this game is to drag it into the mud.
Deep into the mud.
They want to slow the pace to a trudge, hand the ball to Jonathan Taylor, and pray he breaks one.
And sure, they might sprinkle in a little Ameer Abdullah action (everyone gets a turn on the Ameer Abdullah ride), but this offense has a ceiling lower than Rivers’ release point.
I don’t think much of the Niners’ defense, but they are certainly good enough to handle this.
It’s not the same challenge Seattle had last week. No one on the Seahawks had any idea what was coming with Rivers, so they were playing strictly by feel — backyard football.
Seattle still had the second-best defensive performance of Week 15, per EPA data, despite spending the first two seconds of every snap against a never-before-seen offense, guessing what would happen.
The Niners have tape to work with for this week’s game.
And while, of course, the Colts will try to add wrinkles to their gameplan, I don’t think they can really add anything worthwhile with Rivers at quarterback.
Rivers isn’t beating the Niners over the top. He physically can’t do it. Expect the Colts to try and dink-and-dunk their way down the field with screen passes and check-downs to the backs.
But knowing that Rivers can’t throw deep will allow the 49ers’ two strong safeties — Ji’Ayir Brown and Malik Mustapha — to effectively play as linebackers in this game.
Think back to the Carolina win for the 49ers. That was a great defensive game because those two safeties added so much to this team’s challenged run defense.
Until Rivers proves he can complete something beyond 15 yards (10?), the Niners can sell out to stop the run, and with Tatum Bethune trending towards playing as the team’s starting middle linebacker, I expect a better performance against the one route the Colts have to win this game.
The Colts’ defense is stretched
Credit where it’s due: The Colts’ defense is a quality unit.
And, boy, are they physically stout.
DeForest Buckner is back, and you know he wants his pound of flesh in a revenge game. Their linebackers are excellent in the run game, and Grover Stewart is arguably the game’s best run-stuffing defensive tackle.
Kyle Shanahan’s game plan will likely be quite simple: don’t run at Stewart or Buckner.
The play here is to attack the perimeter. Get the ball to the edges, use the screen game, and force those beefy boys to run sideline to sideline. If the 49ers’ speed gets into space, the Colts’ defensive scheme breaks down. Expect to see lots of Christian McCaffrey in “bump” motion out of the backfield.
A turnover (or three) worthy of the blooper reel
Rivers won’t have much of a choice in this game — he is going to try to make a throw he made ten years ago, maybe a deep out to Alec Pierce or a seam throw to tight end Tyler Warren — and his arm is going to betray him.
We’re talking about a ball that looks like a dying quail, floating harmlessly into the waiting arms of a 49ers safety.
We’ll see if they catch it. That’s a problem.
But if it happens, the rout is on.
Once the Colts fall behind, Rivers has to play a legitimate drop-back quarterback role; the comedy of errors begins.
I see the 49ers winning this one comfortably.
Final score prediction: 31-18, and honestly, that scoreline feels generous to Indy.
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