Most Passing Touchdowns and Yards Thru Game X in NFL History (2020 Update)

Now that the 2020 NFL regular season is over, it is time to update the leaders in most passing touchdown and yards through game X in NFL history.

First is the table for touchdown passes, which saw Drew Brees and Tom Brady battle back and forth over the all-time record until Brees’ rib injury cost him four games. But Brees still makes 48 appearances on the list compared to just three for Brady, who did not surpass him until Game #299.

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Take note of Justin Herbert sneaking in there to make it four quarterbacks with 15 touchdown passes through six games. I’m rooting for someone to soon start super hot and throw 16 to clean that cell up a little.

Dan Marino’s days of having a whole column (51-100) to himself are numbered. Patrick Mahomes is currently tied with Marino for the most touchdown passes (114) through 50 games in NFL history. Problem is Mahomes has only played 46 games. Marino’s prime for throwing touchdowns lasted 63 games, so there is a chance he could still hang onto a spot here. Mahomes would have to throw 43 touchdowns in his next 17 games to wipe Marino’s prime out entirely.

Contrary to what happened in 2020, I don’t think 40 touchdown pass seasons grow on trees, though there is a good chance of a 17-game season in 2021. Of course, that may not matter as much if it means the Chiefs are going to end up resting Mahomes again late in the season with the top seed wrapped up.

After a career-high 48 touchdown passes this season, Aaron Rodgers has picked up the pace and is currently wiping out a lot of Drew Brees entries. Rodgers is currently 12 games ahead of Brees’ pace. Whether he can wipe out Brees and Peyton Manning depends on how long Rodgers wants to play. If he played four complete 17-game seasons, that would take him to 265 games through his age-41 season. If he were to average 2.2 touchdowns per start, that would put him at 562 touchdowns through 265 games, easily topping the current mark of 539 by Manning. But projecting out that far with a quarterback who has had multiple collarbone fractures and recent down seasons is tricky. Still, the main takeaway is that he has a shot to take over much of this table.

If reports are accurate, Brees’ regular season career is over at 287 games. He plans to retire after this postseason. It took Brady an additional 12 games to surpass Brees with 573 touchdowns in his 299th game. With one more start in 2021, Brady will be the first QB in NFL history to start 300 regular season games.

Now let’s look at the table for passing yardage leaders, which does not feature as many names as the touchdown pass table.

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So we have Cam Newton for six games before Mahomes takes over. Mahomes has now wiped out all of the old Kurt Warner entries. Mahomes’ lead on Matthew Stafford is actually not that substantial, but he has a good shot to start erasing the beginning of Stafford’s high-volume run.

Stafford just recently took out the little four-game blip that Matt Ryan had taken from Drew Brees before Brees took over for good. Stafford may possibly be done in Detroit, but once he goes to another team he’ll still be able to keep taking spots from Brees. It just seems unlikely that he’ll play long enough to take all of them.

Again, Brees is expected to be finished at 80,358 yards in 287 games. With Brady at 79,204 yards in 301 games, this expects to be another table of mine that he’ll screw up by making me add another column as he surpasses 80k in over 300 games.

There is no denying that longevity plays a huge part in career records.

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Updates on the NFL’s Passing Touchdown Record

Tom Brady (552) is chasing Drew Brees (555) for the NFL’s all-time touchdown pass record, while Aaron Rodgers (377) still has an outside shot of passing both if he chooses to play long enough (and if they ever retire).

With Brady kicking off Week 5 against Chicago on Thursday night, it wouldn’t surprise me if he goes all out — think excessive throws from inside the 3-yard line — to throw three or four touchdowns to get at least a share of a record he has yet to hold.

It’s unclear if this will be the final season for Brees or Brady, but this should be a tight race in 2020, and neither may be able to entirely wipe out Peyton Manning from the leaderboard when you break down the touchdown passes by yards gained.

In the following chart, you can see the record holder for the most touchdown passes that gained at least X amount of yards from 1 to 99. So for the entry of 10, that means Peyton Manning threw 324 touchdown passes that gained at least 10 yards, still beating out Brees (320), Brett Favre (298), and Brady (293) for the time being.

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Brees is within striking distance of basically the whole 1-45 block, but there are some amusing entries in the middle column that show how different the NFL used to be in regards to the long ball. John Hadl and the great Johnny Unitas threw long touchdown passes with amazing frequency that still holds up today. Eli Manning making a few appearances is also interesting. Ben Roethlisberger has a chance to take over the 80+ yard plays, but Aaron Rodgers isn’t far behind for the 70+ yard touchdowns. He has 18 of those, or one behind Brees.

We can also see some interesting things when we go by the game-by-game progression of these records.

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Brees is at 555 touchdown passes in his 279th game. Brady will play in his 290th game on Thursday night. You can see Rodgers is ready to do some damage to this leaderboard after taking over from Dan Marino at Game 111 of his career. Remember, this includes the seven games he didn’t start as Favre’s backup in 2005-07. Rodgers is at 377 touchdown passes in 185 games, giving him a share of the record with Brees at 193 games. So that’s an eight-game cushion.

He still has a long way to go, but Patrick Mahomes may very well wipe out Marino, Rodgers, and anyone else in his path on this chart. Mahomes has a tie of the record at 39 games with Marino, but he’s only played 35 games so far. He should become the fastest player to 100 touchdown passes, then we’ll see from there.