Friday PM Blitz: LA Chargers' Philip Rivers coaches youth football; Jim Harbaugh, Michigan offer middle school QB

By Brent Glasgow | Posted 6/22/2018

Photo via CBS Sports

NFL training camps might still be a month away, but Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers is already calling plays on the gridiron ... for his son's flag football team.

Eric D. Williams of ESPN says Rivers is an assistant coach for his 10-year-old son Gunner's own Chargers squad.

Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers coaching flag football

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Rivers, 36, played for his father, Steve, at Athens High School in Alabama. He'd like to play a few more years, but plans to follow his dad's example and coach his kids.

"This is just kind of the beginning of it," said Rivers, who has six daughters and two sons with wife Tiffany. "I think (Gunner) likes it. I know he likes football, but I think he likes me coaching him. It's fun to be out here coaching the boys and kind of share the sport that I love, and that he's growing to love, and get to kind of do it together."

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh offers middle school quarterback

Michigan middle school quarterback Dante Moore

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After extending scholarship offers to two middle-schoolers earlier this year, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh added another young athlete to his target list at this week's Wolverines football camp in Ann Arbor.

Perry A. Farrell of the Detroit Free Press reports Dante Moore – a 6-2, 165-pound 13-year-old – will enter the eighth grade this fall at the Detroit-area A.G.B.U. Alex & Marie Manoogian School. Moore plays for the Detroit Spartans, who won their third straight United Youth Football League national title last year.

"I've had him since he was 8 years old," Quarterback University founder Donovan Dooley said. "He's going to be special."

High school football player practices after 13 surgeries

JSera Catholic High School football player Zach Round

Inside Edition details the incredible comeback story of 17-year-old Zach Round, a junior at JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano, California, who recently returned to the practice field following 13 surgeries that resulted from the discovery of a brain tumor.

Round was in a wheelchair last year. Now, he's fighting to regain full mobility. 

"I was really excited," Round said of his first practice. "I really got out there. I did everything to the best of my abilities. I did OK. I was a little rusty, I got beat a couple times, not going to lie. But I was really excited."

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Doctors found the tumor with a scan after Round landed on his head in a mountain bike accident. Thirteen surgeries later, he had to learn how to walk again, and did so within a few months.

"It was rough, I hated it," he said. "It was mental. It was bad. I was frustrated. I worked on it for four or five hours every day, just worked really hard at it because I just hated sitting around and watching everybody else work hard. I wanted to work hard myself."

Illinois child inspires on the football field 

Steven Cohn and Erich Fisher of SB Nation: The Champaign Room tell the story of Tuscola, Illinois, 9-year-old Colton Rahn, whose inspirational battle with cerebral palsy caught the attention of the University of Illinois football team.

The Illini celebrated with Rahn when he hit the game-winner in a basketball game, and now, redshirt-junior running back Reggie Corbin is head coach of Rahn's NFL FLAG team, in a league started by Rahn's dad, Jason.

The Tuscola Flag Football League’s inaugural season kicked off June 16, and Rahn's Seahawks played the Eagles in the third game of the day. Rahn – who a doctor once said would never walk on his own, and who fought back after a February stroke – lived a lifelong dream, as he took the field at center.

"That’s special. He’s a special kid," Corbin said. "I’ve been through two shoulder surgeries and that made me want to quit, so if that hasn’t made him want to quit, that’s special. When you see something like that, you can only embrace it because he comes out and is catching one-handed catches and that’s insane to me. I couldn’t catch a one-handed pass until two years ago."

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