Now, Brady didn’t break any records with that pass – he had already surpassed Drew Brees atop that list last season – but he’s opening up a whole lot of daylight between himself and the rest of football history. That 602 puts him a full 31 TD passes beyond Brees, who along with Peyton Manning and Brett Favre make up the entire group of QBs to even reach 500 career TD passes. And with the aging Brady showing no signs of slowing down, that number is only going to get more impressive.
Just for fun, let’s look at the closest active quarterback to Brady in terms of TDs. That would be Aaron Rodgers, who sits at an impressive fifth place on the all-time list … and sits a full 175 TD passes behind Brady, with “just” 427 scoring strikes.
So yeah – 600. It’s a lot.
For Brady, of course, it’s just another milestone in a career whose totals are essentially all milestones at this point.
Earlier this season, he wrested the record for passing yards away from Brees – his league-leading 2275 this year has him at 81,479, roughly 1,100 clear of second place. As far as active guys, the closest sits at sixth all-time – Ben Roethlisberger, who is nearly 20,000 yards shy of Brady’s total. Basically, you could add Dak Prescott’s entire career to Ben Roethlisberger and still come up short.
Brady’s the all-time leader in pass attempts, a record previously held by, you guessed it, Drew Brees (man, turns out that Brees guy put up some numbers), and barring injury, he’s got a good shot at taking another one from Brees before season’s end – he’s about 160 completions short; at his current rate, he’ll get there sometime in December. He’s also started more games than any player in NFL history.
All this, plus a bounteous playoff resume that we’re not going to go into in-depth here, because who has that kind of time? Just assume that in all the regular season categories we just talked about, Brady also tops the all-time playoff list … and is likely positioned to add to those numbers as well.
Think about it – 600 touchdown passes, with plenty more left in the tank. Ordinarily, it would seem like nonsense to extrapolate forward for a player who is already 44 years old, but there’s nothing ordinary about Tom Brady’s career. Say he plays out this year and next – a reasonable expectation, considering his performance to this point. We’re likely looking at something in the vicinity of 650 TD passes and over 85,000 passing yards. There’s a distinct possibility that when he retires, Brady will be a full 100 TDs ahead of second place. It’s just astonishing.
But then again, so is Tom Brady.