If I went out there and played poorly, would people say:
For a man who's never played a down in the NFL, has played Madden 26 a few times and had little reps going into Seattle,he did his job at a level he shouldn't have been able to!
?
He's complicit in this and I'm not babying him. He gets evaluated at the same standard of any other QB.
You have never played a professional football game as a QB. Rivers, before this, had put together a career that's probably getting him to Canton.
For all the talk about how the game has evolved, defenses have evolved, etc. he didn't embarrass himself. I didn't expect him to finish the game, nor did I believe he was a better short-term option than say... a free agent like Taylor Heinicke or Desmond Ridder, etc.
They picked him because of his previous past with Steichen/he was the last competent QB they've had in Indy.
You don't have to baby him, but the situation under which he played is entirely different from every other situation that all the other QBs who played this past week sans maybe Brady Cook for NYJ.
What Rivers put out there against Seattle reflects more on today's QBs and Seattle as opposed to Rivers himself. I don't find that reflection to be positive.