San Diego Chargers: 2016 Philip Rivers deal impacts Los Angeles move

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The San Diego Chargers will have Philip Rivers under center for another four-plus seasons after the two agreed to a contract extension during the preseason. Rivers had previously implied that he would rather retire than relocate his family to Los Angeles, and the offseason featured prolonged buzz about a possible trade to the Titans that never materialized. With Rivers now having committed to the Chargers in the long term after all, what does he know about the potential LA relocation that the public doesn’t?

Veteran players regularly threaten to retire or suggest a trade in the hopes of inching contract negotiations in their favor with their current team. But the Philip Rivers situation felt different. He has seven children with another on the way. And he specifically stated that he had no intention of raising his kids in Los Angeles. While it’s not clear whether he meant that he didn’t want to pull them out of school and start over two hours north, or whether he was subtly stating that he and his conservative evangelical christian family didn’t want to live in a progressive and widely tolerant city like Los Angeles, he did make clear that this was about his children. And now suddenly he’s decided to commit to sticking with the San Diego Chargers for four more years, at a time when most expect them to move to Los Angeles at season’s end. So did he change his mind or did he learn some inside information?

That’ll take time to play out as stadium negotiations in both cities continue. But Philip Rivers appears to have just placed his bets on the Chargers staying put in San Diego for the next several years. And if that turns out to have happened, it’ll lead to speculation that the team told Rivers that a stadium deal in San Diego was already in place. For now, however, it’s a mere sliver of hope for fans who are hoping their team stays put.

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