San Diego Chargers QB Phillip Rivers Broke Record Previously Held By Johnny Unitas and Kurt Warner Last Week

Phillip Rivers is awesome. The fiery veteran has given bloggers all sorts of material over the years with his wild displays of emotion. When this guy is happy it's obvious; angry--ditto. When he is pumped up there is no one in the league that is as animated as he is, and we love him for that. It's provided us with countless seconds of entertainment.

But--did you know he's actually a pretty good quarterback? Record setting even...

From Bleacher Report

Rivers has been a longtime favorite for fantasy football players (once the elite guys are off the board), but his antics combined with a poor running game and bad coaching have left him off the radar of many people.

But he's actually pretty damn good.

As of last Sunday his career QB rating was 97.0. To put that in to the right context--it's the third highest career rating in the history of the NFL behind only Saint Peyton (97.5) and Aaron Rodgers (105.3) (via PFR).

via Bleacher Report

That comes as no surprise though, right? We've always known he's a solid passer, but since his team's have never been exceptional who cares?

Well--this year we may care. Not only about the Chargers, but about Rivers.

After dropping the season opener to a tough Arizona Cardinals team by a point the Chargers have won five in a row. Their passing game is the fourth best in the league so far and their offense the ninth. Were it not for a crappy running game (No. 24--which Brandon Oliver may change going forward) the offense would be rated even higher.

The defense is not great, but it's not bad either (No. 17).

via Bleacher Report

As good as many of the guys are playing, it has been the play of Phillip Rivers that has been beyond exceptional and keeping the team on the right side of the scoreboard. He's generating the stats like he always does, but this year the efficiency and quality of his play has reached a whole new level.

So new in fact that it broke a record last week previously held by two legends--Johnny Unitas and Kurt Warner. For the fifth game in a row his QB rating was over 100. The previous record was four games by Unitas and Warner.

What makes it even better is the way in which he broke it. Of the five games his lowest rating is 123.8 (Week Six against the Raiders. The other four were 124.2 (Week Two, Seattle), 131.4 (Week Three, Buffalo), 130.0 (Week Four, Jacksonville), and 125.3 (Week Five, Jets).

Not only did he break the record, but he set a new bar for whoever wants to try and take it from him. The trick now of course is keeping it up, but if he does we can probably count on two things: Phillip Rivers being named MVP and a deep run in to the post season for the Chargers.

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