Jerricho Cotchery caught 21 of Philip Rivers’ 95 touchdown passes at North Carolina State. Cotchery, at Phillips High in Birmingham, also competed against Rivers of Athens High in the basketball playoffs.
“It was my job to stay on him the whole game,” Cotchery told me last year. “He was a great shooter, so I knew I had to stay in his face the whole game. I couldn’t even let him breathe. We won by almost 30 points.”
Asked what it was like playing in college with Rivers, Cotchery said: “Our senior year, we were playing Carolina; we ran the same play like eight times in a row. He ended up passing for almost 400 yards, and I ended up catching like 200 yards.”