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Brett Favre career statistics

There is a definite changing of the guard taking place at the quarterback position in the NFL right now. To see this clearly, take a look at the current active leaders in career passing yards: Testaverde, Favre, Cunningham, Bledsoe, George, Harbaugh, and Chandler. Of those, only Favre and maybe Bledsoe have any real chance to move up the list significantly. So, excepting Favre, the top of the list won't be changing until the younger crop (Manning et al) start crashing the party.

But Favre is a big exception, and it's becoming clear that he has a real chance to eventually break some of Marino's all-time passing records. In fact, if you look at where Brett is compared to where Dan was at the same age, you'll see that there's not much difference between them:

Career passing yards through age 32

 1. Dan Marino            40720
 2. Brett Favre           38627
 3. Jim Everett           31583
 4. Fran Tarkenton        31135
 5. John Elway            30216
 6. Dan Fouts             30114
 7. Drew Bledsoe          29657
 8. Boomer Esiason        29092
 9. Troy Aikman           28346
10. Joe Montana           27533
11. John Hadl             26938
12. Johnny Unitas         26845
13. Jeff George           26045
14. Joe Namath            25967
15. Ken Anderson          25562
16. Norm Snead            24448
17. Ken O'Brien           24386
18. Dave Krieg            24052
19. Terry Bradshaw        23257
20. Bernie Kosar          23093

Career passing TDs through age 32

 1. Dan Marino           298
 2. Brett Favre          287
 3. Fran Tarkenton       234
 4. Johnny Unitas        210
 5. John Hadl            201
 6. Joe Montana          190
 7. Boomer Esiason       190
 8. Jim Everett          190
 9. Dave Krieg           184
10. Dan Fouts            182
11. Terry Bradshaw       171
12. Joe Namath           166
13. Drew Bledsoe         166
14. Daryle Lamonica      163
15. Bob Griese           161
16. Jim Kelly            161
17. Ken Anderson         160
18. Len Dawson           158
19. Norm Snead           158
20. John Elway           158

As you can see, Favre is at least within shouting distance of Marino, and the two of them outpace everyone else by a mile. When Marino was 33, he threw for 4453 yards and 30 TDs, so Favre is going to have to have a whale of a year just to stay close, but he has a chance. Finally, for fantasy fans, here is the career VBD list through age 32 (this only includes players whose careers started in 1970 or later:)

Career VBD through age 32

 1. Dan Marino           1000
 2. Brett Favre           892
 3. Randall Cunningham    715
 4. Joe Montana           679
 5. Ken Anderson          502
 6. Dan Fouts             486
 7. Boomer Esiason        447
 8. Terry Bradshaw        397
 9. Steve Young           395
10. Bert Jones            388
11. Jim Kelly             379
12. Jim Everett           371
13. Neil Lomax            353
14. John Elway            348
15. Steve Grogan          302
16. Kurt Warner           300
17. Jeff Garcia           291
18. Dave Krieg            278
19. Peyton Manning        263
20. Brian Sipe            262

See also: Terry Glenn