FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts — Tom Brady added yet another record to his unparalleled résumé Sunday, eclipsing Drew Brees on the NFL’s career regular-season passing yards list. He did so with a 28-yard completion to Mike Evans in the first quarter of Sunday night’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. New England Patriots game.
Tom Brady breaks NFL’s all-time passing record
Brady overtook Brees, who amassed 80,358 yards in 287 games, in regular-season game No. 305. Brady entered the contest trailing Brees by 67 yards and needed just five completions Sunday to close that gap.
This year, Brady has already become the oldest quarterback to win multiple games in a season and the first player to make 300 career starts. He has an opportunity Sunday to become the first quarterback to win a game against all 32 teams, with New England, of course, the last on the list.
Brady also has a very good chance of passing Brees for first on the NFL’s career completions list at some point in 2021. He entered Sunday night’s bout with the Patriots 267 completions behind with 14 games to play. Brady is already the NFL’s all-time leader in wins, touchdowns, passing attempts, and virtually every imaginable postseason stat.
The most remarkable part of his body of work is he’s not even close to being done. He recently raised the possibility of playing three more seasons, which would add dozens of more touchdowns, hundreds of more attempts, and thousands of more yards to his already absurd tally.
Could Brady throw for 100,000 yards in his career?
For the sake of argument, let’s say Brady does play three more years after this one and appears in every game. And let’s use his career yards-per-game average (264) to project his production going forward. That means Brady could add nearly another 17,000 yards to his total — which would give him somewhere north of 97,000 for his career.
But Brady’s producing at well above his career average since joining Bruce Arians and the Buccaneers. He has thrown for 301 yards per game in his first 19 starts with Tampa Bay. If he keeps that up, it’s certainly possible that he surpasses 100,000 passing yards in his career — an absolutely unfathomable figure.
How far is 100,000 yards (or 300,000 feet)? It’s 56.8 miles, or roughly the distance between Boston and Providence.
The only current player who has a prayer of putting together that type of career is Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who is the active leader in passing yards per game (308). Mahomes has had an incredible start to his career, throwing for over 15,000 yards at age 26.
But for him to crack 100K, he’ll need to keep up his incredible pace for another 275 games — or 16+ seasons without missing a single one to injury, rest, or suspension.