The NFL combine is a place where teams can get medical evaluations on draft prospects, meet with the players and watch them work out in person. It’s also a place where NFL and media personnel get together and get the league’s rumor mill rolling.
NFL Media’s Rich Eisen on his radio show rolled through the five best rumors he heard at the combine, and one of them included the 49ers and veteran quarterback Philp Rivers.
“I heard at the combine … that Philip Rivers contacted both (the 49ers and Dolphins) to come back late last year,” Eisen said. “Philip Rivers contacted both of them is what I heard and that’s the way I heard it. It didn’t happen. Don’t know why it didn’t happen, but I heard at the combine that Philip, once his season was over, is kinda like ‘so the 49ers are going with Mr. Irrelevant?'”
Rivers, who retired after the the 2020 season, is now coaching high school football in Alabama. Whether he contacted the 49ers or not is not of super serious consequence. He turned 41 in early December and was two years removed from his last NFL snap. San Francisco opted to add Josh Johnson, who was with the team in 2020, instead.
The good news for the 49ers is their QB situation wasn’t so dire that they had to use the services of someone like Rivers if he did call. Brock Purdy played well enough that finding a new starting QB wasn’t really necessary, and it’s hard to believe Rivers would’ve wanted to be a backup anyway.
This rumor may or may not ever be confirmed, but the 49ers avoided ever needing to worry about it thanks to the play of their seventh-round rookie QB.
