Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Tom Brady is knocking on the door of NFL history. As the Buccaneers quarterback gears up for arguably the most highly anticipated regular-season game of his career in Week 4, when he’ll face his former coach Bill Belichick and his former team in the New England Patriots, the seven-time Super Bowl champion also has future Hall of Famer quarterback Drew Brees in the crosshairs. Coming out of Week 3, Brady has 80,291 career passing yards. That means he only needs 68 yards through the air next week to break Brees’ all-time passing yards record.
While nothing is truly guaranteed in life, it’s a virtual lock that Brady will leapfrog over Brees to go where no quarterback has ever gone before, and do so inside Gillette Stadium and against the team that he piled up most of those yards with.
Again, it’s extremely likely that Brady breaks this record in Foxborough and could very well do it on the Buccaneers’ opening drive of the day offensively. At the very least, Brady should have the record in hand by halftime. In the 44-year-old’s 302 regular season starts throughout his career, he has only ever thrown for less than 68 yards once (Week 17 vs. Dolphins, 2005 season). Even when the quarterback suffered a torn ACL in Week 1 of the 2008 season, he had 76 yards under his belt before going down.
This season with Tampa Bay, Brady is averaging 362.3 passing yards per game, so you better get your popcorn ready for even more drama to unfold during this epic head-to-head.
What will be interesting is how the Patriots embrace this record in the midst of Brady’s homecoming. Naturally, the team will welcome him back to Foxborough, but it is fair to wonder if there will be the same pageantry that there was for Drew Brees when he broke this record back in 2018. Of course, that game was played in New Orleans and Brees was a member of the Saints, so it’s somewhat of a different dynamic this time around with Brady in a Bucs uniform.
Whenever Brady earns the record, it’ll be another feather in his cap, which is essentially littered with feathers at this point. On top of the passing yards record that he’ll soon hold, Brady already possesses the all-time wins record and all-time passing touchdown mark. He also has thrown for most passing yards than any NFL quarterback in the playoffs.
