Is quarterback the most demanding position in sports? It’s close enough to make no difference: players must memorize a complicated playbook, orchestrate an entire offense, scan for open receivers while 280lb opponents sprint toward them with violent intent, and then thread a pass to a target who could be 30 yards downfield amid a crowd of defenders. Now try doing all that as a 44-year-old grandfather, exactly 1,800 days since you last started an NFL game.

Philip Rivers broke that historic streak for the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. The longest layoff before then belonged to another 44-year-old quarterback who returned to action after years out of the game, and some time in coaching – Steve Deberg for the Atlanta Falcons in 1998.

After injuries suffered by starting quarterback Daniel Jones and rookie backup Riley Leonard, the primary reason that the Colts invested in this seeming impossibility in the first place is Rivers’ familiarity with what head coach Shane Steichen’s passing game. Steichen had several years of working closely with Rivers at the Chargers, where the quarterback played most of his 16-season career before his first retirement, so at least the offensive designs and play calls would be familiar.

At St Michael Catholic High School in Fairhope, Alabama, where Rivers had been the head coach since 2021, Rivers’ players were excited, and swore that the offense run there was similar to what Steichen had run with Rivers, and a familiar iteration to what Steichen runs now with the Colts. Without that previous Rivers-Steichen connection, asking the old man to come back and face any NFL defense, never mind a Seahawks defense that came into this game ranked first overall in DVOA, would have been the ultimate fool’s errand.

And Sunday’s game went about as well as you’d expect at first. Rivers had a bit of the old Sonny Jurgensen gut going on, and as far as the velocity of his throws … well, my Guardian colleague Ollie Connolly had jokes.

But as the game progressed, Rivers’ immense football smarts – which have not diminished at the same rate as his body – showed up just enough to give the Seahawks’ top-ranked defense some trouble in their own stadium. In the end, Rivers completed 18 of 26 passes for 120 yards, a touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 91.8, and it was his 16-yard third-and-seven conversion on a backside fade ball to receiver Alec Pierce that helped set up what looked like Blake Grupe’s game-winning 60-yard field goal with 47 seconds remaining.

However … Seahawks kicker Jason Myers, who made six field goals overall in Seattle’s 18-16 win, booted the actual game-winner with 22 seconds on the clock. Rivers’ subsequent deep interception to safety Coby Bryant with 11 seconds left brought the curtain down.

Regardless of the result, what Rivers did after such a long time off was remarkable, and unprecedented in NFL history. To travel over 2,000 miles to the NFL’s toughest home stadium and put on this performance shows the power of the football mind, if the football body is able to do just enough. The 8-6 Colts have the San Francisco 49ers, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Houston Texans to finish the regular season, a brutal final slate. But it will be fascinating to see what Rivers can accomplish with more reps in the upcoming weeks. One thing he’s not worried about is the physical side of the game.

“I never minded that part of it,” Rivers said on Sunday. “My wife always tells me I’m crazy because there’s been times in the last three or four years I said, ‘I wish I could just throw one and get hit – hard.’”

Video of the week

If one video can speak a thousand words, it would be the clip of what happened to Patrick Mahomes with two minutes left in the Kansas City Chiefs’ 16-13 loss to the Chargers. Mahomes was trying to drive his team to field-goal range when he suffered a torn ACL, an injury that ends his season.

The result means the 6-8 Chiefs will miss the postseason for the first time since 2014. During that span they won three Super Bowls and reached the AFC Championship Game seven times, and much of that success was down to Mahomes’s brilliance. The Chiefs, who have a litany of issues to solve this offseason, may not have the face of their franchise ready to go when the 2026 season begins.

MVP of the week

Trevor Lawrence, QB, Jacksonville Jaguars. Sometimes, it takes a quarterback a while to get the hang of a new offense. This was the case for Lawrence this season, and his ability to get new head coach Liam Coen’s system under his belt. Coen was hired to turn Lawrence into the “generational” talent that was promised when the franchise selected him with the first overall pick in the 2021 draft. Lawrence has faced all kinds of barriers, from subpar players around him, to having Urban Meyer as his head coach in his rookie campaign, to dealing with three different offensive coordinators in five years, to his own mechanical issues.

Coen had built his equity on his time in Sean McVay’s coaching staff with the Los Angeles Rams, and the fabulous job he did as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator with Baker Mayfield in 2024. Still, this initially looked like a rough partnership. In Weeks 1-12, Lawrence completed 220 of 368 passes for 2,407 yards, 14 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, and a passer rating of 79.4, which ranked him 27th among NFL quarterbacks. But from Week 13 though Sunday’s 48-20 win over the New York Jets, Lawrence has been a completely different player, completing 53 of 89 passes for 803 yards, nine touchdowns, no interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 123.0.

On Sunday, Lawrence accounted for six touchdowns – five through the air, and one on the ground. The Jaguars are 10-4, and they’ll have opponents wondering how to stop this suddenly marvelous offense once the postseason comes around.

Stat of the week

120. That’s how many consecutive games the New England Patriots had won in which they led by 21 or more points. That NFL-best run came to an end on Sunday, as the Buffalo Bills came back from a 21-0 second-quarter deficit to win 35-31, and keep their AFC East hopes alive. Early on, the now 11-3 Patriots looked like an unstoppable machine, while the 10-4 Bills couldn’t stop tripping over themselves.

The Bills needed to do something to turn this around, and they did. In the second half, Allen completed 13 of 20 passes for 158 yards and two touchdowns. Buffalo’s sketchy defense also stepped up in the run game, while James Cook had two touchdowns on the ground.

Buffalo, who had won the division in each of the last five seasons, and New England, who had won it every single year from 2009 through 2019, have split their 2025 series. The Bills have the Cleveland Browns, Philadelphia Eagles, and Jets left on their regular-season schedule, while the Patriots have the Jets, the Baltimore Ravens and the Miami Dolphins. Right now, it seems that the AFC East could belong to either team.

Elsewhere around the league

– Since the Cincinnati Bengals took him with the first overall pick in the 2020 draft, Joe Burrow has been one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks … when he’s been allowed to be. Burrow has been hurt by horrible defenses and struggling offensive lines of late, and though he has one of the NFL’s best receiver duos in Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, the Bengals’ 4-10 record this season isn’t what Burrow – who missed much of the season with turf toe – or anybody else had in their hopes.

Perhaps more disconcerting were the comments Burrow made leading up to Cincinnati’s 24-0 Sunday loss to the Baltimore Ravens. “If I want to keep doing this, I have to have fun doing it,” the quarterback said. “I’ve been through a lot, and if it’s not fun, then what am I doing it for? So, that’s the mindset I’m trying to bring to the table.”

This is not to imply that Burrow is on the edge of a surprise retirement as Andrew Luck was in 2019 – and the man himself has said he is committed to the team – but as the Bengals limp to the end of the regular season and start to formulate their plans for the future, it does bear a bit of watching.

– Say hello to the Denver Broncos, who now own the NFL’s best record at 12-2, and became one of two teams to clinch a postseason berth on Sunday. Denver did so by beating the Green Bay Packers, 34-26, and the 9-4-1 Packers may well have lost more than the game. Receiver Christian Watson, possibly the team’s most important offensive player not named Jordan Love, suffered what looked to be a serious chest injury, and edge rusher Micah Parsons, without question the team’s most important defensive player, is believed to have torn his ACL, which would end his season. The Parsons injury is particularly brutal for the Packers, who gave up first-round picks in 2026 and 2027, along with defensive tackle Kenny Clark, for the four-time Pro Bowler. Parsons had been great for Green Bay, and without him, the Packers’ pressure possibilities do not remotely resemble what they were with him.

- Back on the Denver side, second-year quarterback Bo Nix threw four touchdowns against Jeff Hafley’s complicated defense. Nix is a primary reason, along with Denver’s monstrous defense, that nobody should want to come anywhere near the Mile High City in the playoffs.

– The Seahawks may have (barely) escaped embarrassment against the Colts on Sunday, but they have very little time to enjoy it. On Thursday, they welcome the Los Angeles Rams to Lumen Field, and the Rams are fresh off their 41-34 defense-optional win over the Detroit Lions. At 11-3, the Rams became the first team to clinch a playoff berth, and if they beat the Seahawks (also 11-3) at home, they’ll sweep the season series, and the NFC West will basically be theirs. In the first meeting between these two teams, Seattle nearly won despite Sam Darnold’s four interceptions, and the Rams have been Darnold’s bete noire over the last two seasons. Darnold got off to a rollicking start this season, his first with the Seahawks, but the offense has been a bit stuck since that Week 11 loss. Now is the time for Darnold to tell those old ghosts to go away.