Tom Brady likely to break NFL passing yardage record in Week Four in New England

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Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady is closing in on the NFL record for career passing yardage, and he’s likely to break it when he returns to New England in two weeks on Sunday Night Football.

Brady currently has 79,859 career passing yards, meaning he needs exactly 500 yards to break the all-time record of 80,358 yards, held by Drew Brees.

Through two games this season, Brady is averaging 327.5 passing yards a game, so if he continues at approximately that pace, he’d break the record in Week Four, when he makes his much-anticipated return to New England to play the Patriots.

The career passing yardage record changed hands from Brett Favre to Peyton Manning in 2015 and from Manning to Brees in 2018, so with Brady poised to break it in 2021, it’s been broken every three years. But once Brady breaks the record, he’s going to own it for many, many years. Brady is showing no signs of slowing down, so he’ll likely add many thousands of passing yards to the record, and no one else is particularly close: Ben Roethlisberger, who’s second behind Brady among active players, is almost 20,000 yards behind Brady.

This is a record Brady will likely still own when he’s inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame years from now, and it’s a record he’s likely to break in the most-anticipated game of this NFL season.