Philip Rivers on Chargers’ struggles: ‘I’m playing alright’

The San Diego Chargers sit at 1-4. Naturally, members of the team, including quarterback Philip Rivers, are assessing their own performances.

While Rivers thinks he’s played well, the quarterback also gave a rather blunt assessment of his own play.

“There doesn’t need to be any sympathy for me,” Rivers said, via Ricky Henne, Chargers.com. “I look at it as, while I can honestly say I think I’m playing pretty (well), I’ve always felt my job is to find a way to lead us to win the games. Now we’re five of the last 21 games (the last two seasons). I take responsibility for that, too. I can look at it honestly that yeah, I’m playing alright. But I’m not playing good enough until we walk off winning. We haven’t done that yet.”

The question has to be asked. What more could Rivers do to help his team? To answer that, we first need to look at what he’s done over since the start of last season.

The 2016 numbers are especially perplexing.

The Chargers are averaging better than 30 points per game. Only the Atlanta Falcons are scoring at a higher rate. Of course, while San Diego is 1-4, Atlanta sits at 4-1.

Granted, we’re still relatively early in the season. With that, some numbers can be skewed. But in no way should the league’s second highest-scoring team ever be 1-4.

Of course, football is a team game. When a team has a poor record, every member of it has to look at his own performance and wonder if he’s doing enough. That’s even truer for the Chargers, who have lost four games by a combined 14 points.

If Rivers looks back at his games, he can certainly find moments where he didn’t do enough. Maybe he missed a pass on a third down or threw a bad interception. Maybe there was a moment or two where an incomplete pass meant the difference between a field goal and a touchdown.

But plenty of quarterbacks sit with better records at this point, despite having numbers well short of what Rivers has done.

Rivers is right about one thing. Like most NFL quarterbacks (and players in general) he doesn’t need much sympathy. Rivers has a big, beautiful family, gets to live and work in one of the country’s greatest cities and makes millions of dollars. Certainly, plenty of people have it worse.

But to say that he’s “not playing good enough until we walk off winning” is not entirely accurate. The Chargers’ defense needs to do its job for that, as does Mike McCoy and the rest of the coaching staff. That hasn’t happened in San Diego over the last two years.

Rivers may be technically correct. The team is 1-4. As such, every member of the team is technically not playing well enough to win.

But plenty of quarterbacks who aren’t playing anywhere near as well as Rivers have winning record. The quarterback can look at his own performance and try to get better, for sure. Ultimately, though, Rivers is being let down by too many people that he shares the locker room with.