Peyton Manning on Sunday night broke the all-time record for touchdowns thrown in a career. Brett Favre, who threw for 508 touchdowns in his career, previously held the record. He held the record for about 7 years before Peyton came along and broke it. This is a fantastic accomplishment that should be celebrated but for some reason I’m just not all that into it.
It seems like every year, in the game of football, someone is breaking some record that has stood for however long and it’s great. The way the game is set up today (at least on the offensive side of the ball), all of these great records are going to end up being broken and it’s going to end up being soon. The game of football is now set up for offenses to excel, score tons of and get lots of big plays. It seems like any time a defensive player looks at a player on offense funny it’s going to be a penalty. This just moves the ball closer to the end zone and boom touchdowns.
Peyton Manning is the same guy that just last year broke the record for touchdowns thrown in a season with 55. This is the second time that he has broken this single season record. Some people are probably saying, “There is no way that anyone will be able to break that record, it’s just too much,” to which I say, “Oh yes it can.” The NFL is still looking at expanding the season from 16 games to 18 games and when it does that record will fall very fast.
There are plenty of other records out there that are looking to fall this season too. DeMarco Murry, the star running back for the Dallas Cowboys, is currently on pace for a 2000 yard rushing season and I really would not be surprised if he broke the single season rushing record either. Julius Thomas, tight end for the Denver Broncos, is on pace to crush the number of receiving touchdowns in a season. I’m sure that there are other big records about to be broken but these are a couple of the big ones about to happen.
I’m more impressed with how long some of these records stood. I cannot believe that no one has come close to Jerry Rice’s 197-career touchdown record. There are some many great wide receivers in the game today that someone should be getting close.
Peyton’s all-time career passing touchdowns will probably stand for a while because he doesn’t seem to show any signs of slowing down anytime soon and no one in the league is anywhere close to touching him. This record will be broken though along with many others that we think no one will ever get. We should not be marveling at the records themselves but at how long they stand.
