The Chargers are wasting another year of Philip Rivers’ great career

Dan Fouts played his entire career in San Diego. He put up incredible numbers, was universally respected as a great quarterback and made the Hall of Fame. And he never made a Super Bowl.

Of course this leads us to Philip Rivers.

Rivers will turn 34 years old next month. He is wasting another year of his great career on a terrible team that has been battered with injuries. He might play for many more years — he’s as good as ever, really — but at this point you have to wonder if this is just Fouts all over again. Rivers has never played in a Super Bowl and the 2-7 Chargers seem light years away from a championship these days.

On Monday night, Rivers did his best in a 22-19 home loss to the Chicago Bears. Injuries have left the Chargers shorthanded and it showed. Top receiver Keenan Allen is done for the year. When veteran receiver Malcom Floyd went out with a shoulder injury Monday night, Rivers was left throwing to Antonio Gates, Stevie Johnson and a few guys even the most hardcore fantasy football owner hasn’t heard of. Down three points in the fourth quarter, Rivers hit Javontee Herndon for a first down at the two-minute warning. It was Herndon’s first career catch.

After Rivers took a couple sacks behind a beat-up offensive line, his desperate fourth down throw fell incomplete. Rivers walked off without one of his typical demonstrative displays of emotion, just shaking his head once as he looked down. The next time ESPN’s cameras showed him, he had his eyes closed and they stayed that way for a few seconds. One can only wonder what was going through his mind.

The Chargers’ patchwork team took some awful penalties against the Bears, including a couple bad ones by players who should know better. In the fourth quarter, Stevie Johnson spiked the ball for some reason after a first-down catch inside the 5-yard line, causing a delay of game. Rivers made an incredible play on third-and-goal to scramble and hit Antonio Gates for a touchdown, but lineman D.J. Fluker was illegally downfield. The Chargers were short on the next play and had to kick a field goal. The Bears came right back and took the lead on an amazing touchdown catch by tight end Zach Miller, when he batted it out of the air with one hand to himself. The Chargers never led again.

And even though Rivers kept the Chargers in the game with 280 yards, it was just another loss. Not that it was in doubt before Monday night, but the Chargers and Rivers are left to play out the string for the rest of the season.

Rivers came into the game on pace for 5,506 yards, completing 69.2 percent of his passes. But what does it really mean? San Diego’s game at Green Bay a few weeks ago, in which Rivers threw for 502 yards but the Chargers came a few yards short of sending the game to overtime, summed up the whole season.

Rivers had chances at a Super Bowl, but mostly early in his career. The team he took over from Drew Brees was loaded, but couldn’t break through. The one time Rivers got a chance to play in an AFC championship game, he played through a torn ACL at New England. Not surprisingly, the Patriots won. Rivers hasn’t been back to another conference title game.

Rivers is probably a Hall of Famer. He has had a tremendous career, even though he hasn’t played on the sport’s biggest stage yet, and at this moment his chances of doing so in the next few years seem bleak. He’ll finish the season with a bad team that has practically no chance of making the playoffs.

The Chargers fans are all too familiar with this story line and an all-time great quarterback. It seems like it’s happening again.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab