The season is over. It is truly a cruel twist of fate that the bitter anguish that accompanies that fact has become so agonizingly familiar to him. Philip Rivers can recite its patterns and rhythms with a disgusted ease. He knows precisely the pain he’ll encounter when a season ends before the Super Bowl. He’d done it 16 years in a row. This marks No. 17.
But that’s not what made him cry Saturday night.
The first kick in the gut will come mid-week when he wakes up in the morning with no enemy to prepare for.