North Carolina State football rumors: Philip Rivers smoke turning into fire
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North Carolina State lost to Stanford on the road on Saturday. After the game, NC State decided to move on from Dave Doren as the head coach. This is the first time since Tom O’Brien was fired in 2012 that the school is looking for a new head coach.
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One name that keeps popping up is former NC State quarterback Philip Rivers. Now, it seems those rumors are growing legs, according to Bruce Feldman of The Athletic.
“‘It’s definitely more than smoke,’ an industry source told The Athletic on Sunday about the Rivers-to-NC State scenario,” Feldman wrote.
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Rivers was the starting quarterback for NC State from 2000 through 2003. In his time there, he passed for 13,484 yards with 95 touchdowns while being named the ACC Player of the Year once. Since 2021, he has been the head coach of St. Michael Catholic. He is 50-19 as the head coach there. His son, Gunner Rivers, is the current quarterback for St. Michael Catholic and is comitted to NC State.
“The 44-year-old Rivers, the ACC Player of the Year in 2003, interviewed last offseason for the Buffalo Bills head-coaching vacancy that went to Joe Brady. We heard the Bills brass was very impressed with Rivers and his vision. There are sure to be comparisons to former NFL QB Trent Dilfer’s jump from high school coach to FBS head coach at UAB, which did not go well. But as one NFL source noted to The Athletic, Rivers has a lot of ’emotional intelligence’ and basically called his own plays in the NFL,” Feldman added.
The Dilfer era went just 9-21 at UAB before he was fired during the 2025 season. Prior to coaching at UAB, Dilfer had found success as the head coach of Lipcomb Academy. Still, there is one difference. Rivers was a much better quarterback than Dilfer. Now, whether he will be a better coach is yet to be seen.
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