On the offense's ability to make key plays when they had to all game:
RIVERS: I just thought every guy stepped up big. I thought the offensive line continued to battle. We felt like we got in a good rhythm and we felt like their defense was a little bit on the ropes, kind of dialing up all kind of different stuff. And our line did a good job of adjusting with whatever they threw at us. I think every skilled player stepped up big at some point. I think of a [WR] Keenan Allen third down, I think of a handful of [TE Antonio] Gates' third downs. Obviously [WR] Eddie Royal was playing, you think of what [WR] Malcom [Floyd] did early, you think of some catches [WR] Vincent Brown made, [RB] Danny Woodhead. I mean, every guy made plays when we needed them. And it was gutty win. One like I can't remember us having in a while. We've won gutty in Pittsburgh, we won in New York last year, but this kind of game we've won our fair share of over the last seven or eight years, they just hadn't happened as often. And it feels awesome to win one of these.
On if this win is more satisfying after a short week, tough loss, and traveling West-East Coast:
RIVERS: No question. I think it just says a lot about our football team as a gritty, gutty, tough football team. Everybody talks about us out there on the West Coast and Southern California, but we got a lot of gritty, tough guys that fight until the end. We knew what this game was going to be. We knew it was going to be a track meet from the standpoint of how fast they were going to go offensively. We kind of no-huddled the no-huddlers as we got going. We had our own rhythm of no-huddle going and it was just a heck of a team win. Back and forth. We had two turnovers late and our defense had big stops when we needed them and obviously [K] Nick Novak making that kick at the end was awesome to see it go through.
On the importance of keeping the Eagles' offense off of the field:
RIVERS: I think keeping them off the field is important if you're scoring. The time of possession stat is the one that I never look at and completely don't care about. You score. The name of the game is scoring. If you can go twelve plays and score touchdowns, we'd love to do that against this defense to keep their offense off the field. But the name of the game is scoring. We didn't have a plan to dink and dunk, we had a plan to go score and I think that was evident. We took some shots down the field, we got chomp plays, and it was an all-around good offensive performance minus the turnovers, which we overcame today. And you can't always do that, but it's awesome that we did today.
On Malcolm Floyd's injury:
RIVERS: That's tough when you see any teammate [go down]. We don't just care about him because we like him, but we do. He's probably the favorite of the whole team. He's the most humble guy in the locker room, hands down. And you see a teammate down there getting carried off, it's tough. And I think Malcolm's going to be okay. He was never away from us there. He was with us the whole time as far as talking and [being] awake. Our prayers are with Malcolm that he'll have a speedy recovery. But that's tough in the midst of that game, the first play of the second half and you got to go from thinking about your teammate and your buddy to switching gears to continue to play a game and rookie [WR] Keenan Allen comes in there to fill his spot and made some huge plays and third down catches and it was as tough of a team win and it feels good when you win like this.
On the difference in Eddie Royal this year:
RIVERS: Well, I think one is obviously he's healthy and we've just been able to get in a rhythm. Any time you sign a free agent, a new receiver, it takes some time to get in the flow and to get them in the flow and the rhythm of the game. And last year, he had some injuries. He had some games where he was rolling pretty good. New Orleans comes to mind. Oakland, the last game of the year, he had some big plays. And he had some spurts of others, but it's nice to get him rolling. He's dangerous with the ball. And I know he doesn't like to be identified as slot receiver because he sees himself as more than that, and he is more than that. But when you have a guy like that in the slot, it just opens up the whole field. It's not just, okay, worry about outside guys and worry about Gates. Now it's like, well, what about this Number 11 here that's caught five touchdowns in two games. It's been awesome to see the plays he made. He's made big plays. He's not just made catches for us, he's made big time plays.
On his progression from last season to this season:
RIVERS: It was a natural progression. Obviously the disappointment from the previous season and then you gradually grow, but I was excited about [Head Coach] Mike [McCoy] coming in and the time spent with [Offensive Coordinator] Ken Whisenhunt and [Quarterbacks Coach] Frank Reich has been awesome and when you're a competitor and you hate to lose, you're going to do whatever you can to try to win and I bought in from day one. They were very receptive to ideas that I had from things we've done in previous years and that kind of meshed into an awesome system with their terminology. It's still early. We're 1-1. Obviously we let one get away from us last week but it feels good to come on the road and get to 1-1 and see if we can build on this.
On the offensive line giving him a lot of time to throw today:
RIVERS: Offensive line was awesome. Again they gave multiple looks and they gave us tons of looks. They stayed in a base personnel to our three receiver sets. That can make it tough on the line calls and lots of different things. They mixed up a lot of dogs and blitzes. They were kind of dialing everything up. They went to cover zero, bringing everyone, and that's when we knew they knew that they didn't want to sit there and cover us all day. They better come after us. But they're a tough group. They're a tough, play hard group. It was a classy football game from the standpoint of the way their players played, how hard they played, and how clean it was. But our offensive line battled them, battled them all day. I don't know that we gave up a sack. We gave up one. And that was early in the game and we went about 40 throws after that without one so that was a good job by them.
