Seahawks expect a Disney movie against them Sunday
Published 9:30 am Thursday, December 11, 2025
Uchenna Nwosu has played with Philip Rivers.
When they were on the Chargers together, Nwosu was at the beginning of his NFL career while Rivers was ending his.
Supposedly ending his career, that is.
Could the now-Seahawks linebacker imagine his former Charger teammate Rivers agreeing to sign back into the league with the Colts at age 44, after five years in retirement, leave his 10 kids including his son and the high-school team he coaches in Alabama, to get on Indianapolis’ team plane this weekend for a 5-hour flight to Seattle during Christmastime — all to then sit on the bench? To not play for the Colts against the Seahawks on Sunday?
“No,” Nwosu said at his locker before practice Wednesday.
He laughed the laugh of knowing an ol’ teammate.
“Absolutely not,” Nwosu said.
“I’m expecting him to play, yeah. I’m expecting him to play. They didn’t bring him in for no reason.”
Yes, the Seahawks are now expecting a Disney movie to unfold against them Sunday at Lumen Field (1:25 p.m., CBS television, KIRO-7 locally).
Coach Mike Macdonald and his staff are game-planning for a 44-year-old grandfather, a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026, who hasn’t played since the end of the 2020 season, to play against them Sunday with just three practices of preparation since coming out of retirement.
If Rivers plays, his five-year clock of waiting from his last game until eligibility for the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, resets.
It’s unprecedented. And, until this week, unheard of.
“If anybody can pull it off, it’s him,” Macdonald said Wednesday. “The guy’s probably one of the best competitors in the history of the NFL. I’m sure he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t feel he’s ready.
“So we’re getting ready for him, like he’s been playing the whole time.”
Macdonald chucked at the bizarre turn of events Wednesday. He thought of last season, his first one as a head coach at any level.
At the age of 37, the new coach had Seattle’s new starting center he had just signed to a big-bucks contract, Connor Williams, quit the sport in the middle of the season.
He met with and practiced his Seahawks for a November game in the dark at team headquarters through multiple days of power outages from a Pacific Northwest storm.
He won 10 games, one of the best debuts in league history for a rookie coach — yet the Seahawks did not make the playoffs.
After all that, Macdonald had found this second, 2025 season relatively routine for his 10-3 Seahawks.
Until now.
Seattle’s coach went from Monday expecting to play Colts rookie Riley Leonard in his first NFL start or perhaps journeyman Brett Rypien coming up off the practice squad to scheming against a legend for Sunday.
Macdonald shook his head and smiled.
“It’s the NFL, man,” he said. “Every week is different.
“Finally, we had something kind of crazy happen this year that wasn’t expected. I suppose last year, with the power going out, we had something every week last year.”
Some doubt Rivers can get ready in four days to play Sunday. Macdonald and the Seahawks do not.
Their coach began devising a game plan for Rivers late Monday into Tuesday, when news broke Rivers had a tryout with Indianapolis in the wake of starter Daniel Jones and backups Anthony Richardson and Leonard all being injured.
“Shoot, danggammit,” Seahawks wide receiver Cooper Kupp said, imitating one of the Alabama native Rivers’ folksy sayings.
“Shoot, it’s Philip Rivers. His resume speaks for itself.”
The eight-time Pro Bowl quarterback, who first played in 2024 as a rookie for the then-San Diego Chargers last played for the Colts on Jan. 9, 2021, in an AFC wild-card playoff game at Buffalo to end the 2020 season. That’s the last time the Colts have been to the postseason. They are hanging on to hopes to return this season. They are 8-5, having lost four of their last five games. It’s setting up to be Rivers or bust for Indianapolis’ playoff hopes.
Rivers has been out of the sport for longer than the majority of the league has been in it (the average career span in the NFL is 3.3 years). The father of 10 kids who became a grandfather at the age of 42 is now four years older than his new head coach in Indianapolis.
Asked for his reaction when he heard Rivers was coming back, Seahawks 11th-year veteran defensive end Leonard Williams said: “I just thought, ‘Couldn’t be me.’”
Williams grinned.
“I feel like if I was retired for that long, it would be hard to come back to the NFL,” he said.
Rivers actually doesn’t need all that much spin up on coach Shane Steichen’s Colts offense. He has played for Steichen, for six years with the Chargers. Steichen’s first NFL coaching job was with the Chargers in 2011-12 as a defensive assistant. From 2014-19, Steichen coached on the Chargers offense Rivers ran. That included 2016-19, when Steichen was Rivers’ quarterbacks coach, spending most minutes of every football work day with him.
In 2019 Steichen became the offensive coordinator and play caller for Rivers. That was the QB’s final season with the Chargers, before he played his (supposedly) final NFL season for the Colts in 2020.
Asked in Indianapolis Wednesday why he’s coming back now, with the Colts, Rivers told reporters: “As simple as can be, a coach that I love and an organization that I really enjoyed being with. “(Colts owner) Mr. (Jim) Irsay believing in me in 2020 when it didn’t go so good in 2019. The teammates that I was able to play with, shoot, 14 of them are still here. Training room is the same. PR guys are the same. Equipment room is the same.
“They wanted me. I try to keep it as simple as that.”
The Colts wanted him after Jones ruptured his Achilles tendon last weekend in Indianapolis’ loss to Jacksonville. Leonard replaced him, then injured his knee. Steichen said this week Leonard is “week to week.” The only other Colts quarterback is on the practice squad, Rypien, the Spokane native from Shadle Park High School.
And it’s not that Rivers has just been sitting on his couch away from the sport the last five years. He’s been spinning passes with the players he’s been coaching in high school. That includes his son Gunnar, whom Rivals.com ranked as the number-two recruit in Alabama. Rivers is the head coach at St. Michael Catholic in Fairhope, Alabama. His team with his son as starting quarterback just finished a 13-1 season with a loss in the Alabama Class 4A state playoffs.
In fact, Rivers was running and coaching Steichen’s offense for St. Michael Catholic this high-school season that just ended Nov. 28. Former NFL star and current CBS television analyst J.J. Watt posted that fact online Tuesday, among what he wrote was a “fun fact learned in production meetings.”
“He and Shane Steichen spoke weekly about it, discussing plays and even film,” Watt wrote on X/Twitter Tuesday. “So familiarity with the scheme should be no problem whatsoever.”
Mike Macdonald’s task
All that and more are why Macdonald is scheming his Seahawks defensive game plan for Rivers, not Leonard or Rypien, Sunday.
“Yeah, we’re expecting him to play,” Macdonald said. “We’ve got to be ready for Riley and for Brett. But…yeah.”
Macdonald began this week talking about the unpredictability of preparing for rookie quarterbacks, which Seattle’s defense has faced and beaten twice in the last three games, Cam Ward at Tennessee and Max Brosmer with Minnesota. He talked Monday how there wasn’t a ton of game film to watch on Brosmer, who made his first NFL start in Seattle — and got trounced 26-0 while throwing four interceptions and the Seahawks sacking four times.
What is the unpredictability of preparing to defend a 44-year-old grandpa who hasn’t played in five years?
“Yeah, it’s tricky,” Macdonald said Wednesday. “You know me: Do you over-think it? I mean, you are going to go back and watch some of the stuff he did before he retired. You are obviously go off a lot of what they’ve done this year (with Jones).
“At the end we’ve got to go play football. We’ve got to make sure we are on our stuff, that we’re ahead of plays and playing our style of ball.”
The News Tribune asked Macdonald if he was going over Alabama Class 4A high school football game film of the St. Michael Catholic team Rivers just coached to a 13-1 season running Steichen’s Colts offense.
The Seahawks coach shook his head. He laughed.
“No,” Macdonald said. “No.”
