Philip Rivers finally reaching full potential under Mike McCoy

Under Mike McCoy, Philip Rivers has become great. Under Philip Rivers, the San Diego Chargers have become great.

After years of mediocrity under Norv Turner–who is Minnesota’s current offensive coordinator–Philip Rivers is finally the quarterback we always hoped he’d be. All it took was head coach, Mike McCoy, to mold the 32-year old into an early MVP candidate.

On draft night back in 2004, the New York Giants traded their fourth overall pick Philip Rivers to the San Diego Chargers for the Bolts’ first overall choice, Eli Manning. While Manning has won two Super Bowls in New York, Rivers has yet to even reach the most important game of the year as he heads into Week 5 of his 11th NFL season.

In his first full season starting for San Diego, Rivers led the Chargers to a 14-2 record and the playoffs, where they would fall to the New England Patriots. In that season, Rivers propelled San Diego’s offense to rank 1st in points and 4th in yards (with the help of LaDainian Tomlinson, of course).

After that season, Marty Schottenheimer was fired, and Norv Turner was hired to coach the Chargers.

In six seasons under Turner, San Diego only made the playoffs three times, and most importantly, couldn’t manage to win a conference title.

Rivers never faltered under the guidance of Turner, but was never anything to fawn over, either. All of Rivers’ career-highs (with the exception of completion percentage) came under Turner, but let’s not give him too much credit as Rivers only played one full season under a different coach before his firing. Turner has proven to be a good offensive coordinator (has been hired by six different NFL teams for this position, along with one college program), but clearly can’t run an entire team as the head coach. Whatever numbers Rivers mustered up under Turner were most likely from his natural progression as a quarterback.

When San Diego’s front office finally decided to give Turner the boot, Rivers changed from a good quarterback on an average team to a great quarterback on a great team. When San Diego’s front office decided to hire Mike McCoy as their next head coach, it was just the first step to building a championship contender in a very short period of time.

McCoy has a long list of various coaching jobs throughout the league dating back to 2000. McCoy started his career off in Carolina, where he would stay for eight years. McCoy had various positions, from offensive assistant, to wide receivers coach, to something very intriguing: quarterbacks coach.

McCoy coached Carolina’s quarterbacks from 2004 to 2008, where Jake Delhomme got the majority of the starts aside from the ’07 season.

Delhomme played one season in Carolina before McCoy made the position switch, and immediately saw improvement in ’04. While Delhomme’s completion percentage dropped a bit, hit rating jumped from 80.6 to 87.3, threw for 10 more touchdowns and one less interception, along with over 600 more passing yards.

Those numbers were following Carolina’s ’03 Super Bowl appearance, in which McCoy was the team’s offensive assistant at the time.

After that season, Delhomme’s numbers never improved after his terrific ’04 season, and would only start all 16 games two out of his next five seasons as a Panther. In Delhomme’s last season in Carolina, McCoy left for the Denver Broncos for the 2009 season. Delhomme played one season in Cleveland after that, and then retired after the 2011 season where he only played in one game for the Texans.

In his first season with the Broncos, McCoy became the team’s offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach. McCoy came in during a time of change for the Broncos, with the quarterback swapping of Jay Cutler and Kyle Orton in an offseason trade with the Bears.

Orton and McCoy were off to a great start in their first season with Denver at 6-0. After that start, the Broncos went on a four-game losing streak and won two more games before closing the ’09 season on another four-game skid.

The Broncos started out 2-2 in the 2010 season before yet another four-game losing streak under Orton. Orton won his last game in Denver that season before yet another four-game losing streak would get him benched after 13 games. To close out the season, perhaps one of the strangest and most exciting periods in sports began: Tebow Time.

Tim Tebow closed out the ’10 season 1-2, but still earned most of the snaps in 2011. Orton began the season, but after five starts and a 1-4 record, he was traded to Kansas City. Tebow Time had officially begun.

Tebow’s first game as a starter was an 18-15 overtime win over the Dolphins, and thus began one crazy season. After a blowout loss the next week to Detroit, Tebow and the Broncos went on a six-game winning streak, two of those victories coming in overtime. Denver ended the regular season on a three-game skid, but still ended up making the playoffs.

In Denver’s wild card matchup with the Steelers, Tebow’s heroics were on full display as he threw an 80-yard touchdown strike to Demaryius Thomas on the first play of overtime to shock Pittsburgh. Tebow’s magical season ended the next week after being blown out by the eventual AFC champion Patriots.

While the 2011 season was a wild ride (in a good way), John Elway and the Broncos realized Tebow wasn’t the right fit at quarterback. With perhaps the greatest free agent of all time on the market, Denver signed Peyton Manning, and shipped Tebow off to the Jets.

McCoy would leave after Manning’s first season in Denver, as he had become one of the league’s best offensive coordinators. San Diego hired McCoy as their head coach, and in only a season and four games, McCoy has helped Rivers turn his career around.

While McCoy was undoubtedly a great quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, he learned from arguably the best to ever lead an offense in Manning. After a full season of observing Manning–how he approached everything from training camp, to practice, to games–McCoy had to have picked up a lot of that and carried it with him to San Diego. With how Rivers has played under McCoy, I think that’s a fair assumption.

In McCoy’s first year with the Chargers, Rivers might not have had his best season, but definitely had a great one. Rivers broke 4,000 yards, threw 32 touchdowns (second-highest total after ’08 season), 11 interceptions (lowest total since ’09), and the highest completion percentage of his career at 69.5%.

In a tough division with Manning’s Broncos and the Chiefs (began season 9-0), San Diego sneaked into the playoffs with a 9-7 record. The Chargers beat Cincinnati on wild card weekend, only to fall in Denver the next week. Rivers finished the 2013 postseason with a 69.8 completion percentage, 345 yards, 3 touchdowns, and zero interceptions (116.9 rating).

After four games this season, the Chargers are 3-1, with one of those wins coming against the defending champion Seahawks. Rivers has thrown 1,155 yards, nine touchdowns, one interception and has a 70.1 completion percentage.

While the Chargers are on pace to perhaps have their best season in a very long time, Rivers is on pace to have his greatest season along with an MVP trophy.

It has been a long time coming for Rivers to be finding this much success, and it seems all it took was a coaching change.

The duo of Rivers and McCoy has surprised the league early on, but they still haven’t accomplished anything yet. San Diego is set up to contend in the AFC, and Rivers is looking like the MVP favorite thus far. Don’t sleep on the Chargers, because we could be watching them deep in the playoffs for years to come as long as McCoy is coaching and Rivers is taking the snaps.

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