​Friday Film Room: Philip Rivers

Philip Rivers isn't going to win the NFL passing title.

Yes, sure, the San Diego Chargers quarterback is currently on pace to throw for 5,506 yards, which would be a single-season league record. (And actually, Tom Brady is on pace for 5,509 yards. So there.) Rivers' numbers have been outrageous through half the season: He's topped 300 yards passing in six of his eight games, has topped 400 yards twice, and 500 yards once. He has games of 65, 58 and 48 pass attempts. He's only failed to throw for two touchdowns once.

But hints of Rivers' true nature come in his Total QBR. Yes, judging by good old-fashioned passer rating, he's seventh in the league at 102.1; as Phil Simms and every other old-school announcer taught you, "Anything over 100 is lights out!" But Rivers' Total QBR is just 66.3, 11th in the NFL among qualified signal callers, one slot behind Matt Ryan, who many fantasy football fans hate right now. A Total QBR of 50 is average. And while I approach all stats in pro football with a healthy dose of skepticism, I'll tentatively endorse this one, because it backs up what I see on tape from Rivers: He can get on a hot streak like nobody's business, but he's also prone to bouts of head-clutching play.

Listen, you know Rivers' strengths. He's got that insane slingshot delivery, and when he's "on" and can get the ball off in time, he's deadly:

Half the time I think defenses can't defend Rivers' throws because they're so stunned he can shot-put a ball 25 yards on a line. He probably bombed the ball downfield more consistently early in his career, but he still takes his share of deep strikes. Carson Palmer leads the NFL with 30 attempts that have traveled 25 yards in the air or more, but Rivers has a respectable 18 and has completed eight of those throws, four resulting in touchdowns.

Of course, Chargers fans know there's a Bad Phil, too. Rivers is a brave man, and he takes hits. In recent years that has led to suspicions of back, chest, arm, hand and knee injuries (actually, the knee injury was real: he played an AFC title game with a torn ACL). There has come a point in every recent season when Rivers has suffered a sudden downturn that Chargers beat reporters suspect has been the result of injury, only all of us are left wondering because Rivers isn't a guy who makes excuses. But, like, listen, this kind of stuff happens a lot (this play is actually from Week 13 of 2014 against the Ravens, not last week):

It's hard to blame Rivers for having a pocket collapse on him and still trying to make a throw, but his valor often does lead to indiscretions.

More importantly, he's an old-fashioned, Favre-esque desperado who goes down firing. His spate of abysmal results in December 2014 correlated with the Chargers tumbling out of the AFC playoff race: from Week 14 onward, he was 97-of-162 (59.9%) with six TDs and eight INTs, failing to eclipse 300 yards passing in three of four contests. And the interceptions? They were bad, man. They were really bad:

And:

And:

Obviously, it's not fair to only show you a litany of poor decisions executed with poor fundamentals, and then conclude, "He can't play!" He can play. Philip Rivers is a legit above-average NFL quarterback. But he's streaky, and the snowball can roll downhill for him at high velocity, especially when he's in "force-it" mode.

For fantasy football purposes, it's worth asking whether it's smart to bet against a hot streak from guys like Rivers and Andy Dalton, despite the fact that we've seen them sabotage fantasy seasons in the past. Heading into Week 9, Rivers is the NFL's No. 2 overall fantasy point leader behind only Brady. In Monday night's matchup against a sagging Bears defense, I rate Rivers my No. 5 QB of the week. Over the long term, though, I've seen him spiral down the drain enough to worry that he could lay an egg at the worst possible moment. Heck, against the Raiders in Week 7 of this year, Rivers emerged with a respectable stat line: 38-of-58 for 336 yards, 3 TDs and 2 INTs. But he was awful until the Chargers were down 37-6: 15-of-30 for 101 yards, 0 TDs, 2 INTs and an intentional grounding penalty. It was awful stuff, followed up with about a hundred of these to pad his stats:

Obviously his fantasy owners will take it, because garbage time transmogrified a crummy Rivers day to 25 standard-league fantasy points. On the other hand, garbage time is a bad habit. It can fail you.

I understand the particularities of the Chargers' situation: They're out of the playoff race, their offensive line can't run block and they lost Keenan Allen for the season. You could make the argument that Rivers might as well just keep slinging as his team attempts to slink north to Los Angeles this spring. But I've seen Bad Phil too many times. I don't feel comfortable calling him an elite quarterback, or an elite fantasy weapon heading into your playoffs.

Christopher Harris (@HarrisFootball) is a six-time Fantasy Sports Writing Association award winner. He hosts the Harris Football Podcast every weekday. Find it on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn and most other podcast apps, as well as at www.HarrisFootball.com.