Former NFL quarterback Phillip Rivers made headlines last year when he returned to the game, rejoining the Indianapolis Colts after a five-year absence.
Now, at age 44, he’s a major college football coach at North Carolina State University. The Wolfpack announced the decision on Nov. 13 to bring back the program’s former standout quarterback from the early 2000s as the team’s 37th head coach.
“I am humbled and honored to be the next head football coach at N.C. State University,” Rivers said in a statement on Friday. “In many ways, I feel like I’m coming home. This is where it all began for me as an 18-year-old kid from Alabama, and now to return to this great place as head coach is beyond words.”
If it sounds like a massive leap for Rivers to go from a brief NFL return to a head coaching gig in less than a year, it actually isn’t. The Athens, Alabama, native coached at St. Michael Catholic High School from 2021 until this year, and that included last season before he jumped back on board with the Colts.
Indianapolis needed a quarterback after injuries to Daniel Jones, Anthony Richardson, and Riley Leonard. Rivers played three games in 2025 with a 0–3 record when the Colts were in the playoff hunt.
He completed 63 percent of his passes for 544 yards and four touchdowns versus three interceptions. It wasn’t far below his performance in his storied NFL career, where he played for the then-San Diego Chargers for 16 years and the Colts for two.
Rivers threw for 63,984 yards and 425 touchdowns amid a 64.9 percent completion rate, and he went 139–104 in those games. An eight-time Pro Bowler, Rivers led the Chargers to the playoffs six times and the Colts once in 2020.
His standout career at N.C. State from 2000 to 2003 led to his NFL success as a former No. 4 pick in 2004. Rivers completed 63.6 percent of his passes for 13,484 yards and 95 touchdowns for the Wolfpack, and the team went 33–17 in that span, which included three bowl wins.
While the New York Giants selected Rivers with the No. 4 pick, the team traded him to San Diego because Eli Manning, the No. 1 pick by the Chargers, didn’t want to play there. Rivers’ time with the Chargers also had a unique quarterback wrinkle with Drew Brees already off to a good start in his career.
While having two high-level quarterbacks could create problems, they were known to be amicable about it, and the Chargers didn’t move on from Brees until after a shoulder injury in 2005. When Brees moved on to the New Orleans Saints in free agency, the quarterback matchup never turned into much of a rivalry because of the respect level.
Rivers went into coaching high school right away, and enjoyed success with St. Michael amid state semifinal appearances in 2024 and 2025 amid a 49–20 overall career record. He took over a program for a school that opened in 2018 and went 6–15 before his arrival.
During his tenure, Rivers coached his son, Gunner, a four-star quarterback who committed to N.C. State earlier this year.
Rivers and his wife, Tiffany, have 10 children.
“I’m a homebody, so there’s not a lot going on outside of faith, family, and football,” Rivers told Colts.com in a 2020 interview. “I know it comes off cliché, but it pretty much sums me up.”
Rivers now looks to build a new football family with a Wolfpack program that hasn’t enjoyed a lot of success in recent years. N.C. State (4–5) is in danger of a second losing season in three years amid the firing of Dave Doeren, and Rivers expressed his readiness to build on what he did in Raleigh before.
“I gave it everything I had here as a player for 51 games, and I will give it everything I have as the coach,” Rivers said in his statement. “There’s no denying that this is going to take hard work, but we’re not scared of hard work.
“I look forward to getting after it every single day with an unbelievable coaching staff and a group of players who are dedicated to relentlessly pursuing victory.”
