THE RECORDS — NFL LEADERBOARDS

8StarSports · The Records · NFL foundation pack. Compiled October 19, 2026.

As-of basis (applies to every table): Regular-season totals through the end of the 2025 season (i.e., through Super Bowl LX, February 2026). The 2026 season is in progress and no 2026 statistics are included — mid-season totals are a moving target. Players still active in 2026 are marked † and will move; their figures are frozen at the snapshot. Categories: the nine commissioned by Jason S. Jackson — QB Wins; Passing Yardage; Passing Touchdowns; Receiving Yardage; Receiving Touchdowns; Rushing Yardage and Touchdowns; Sacks; Interceptions; Defensive Touchdowns. Verification: every total in the main tables was corroborated by two independent sources actually fetched during research. Source pairings per table, the full disputes register, and all UNVERIFIED/single-source flags are in the companion file nfl-sources-and-notes.md. Disagreements are printed there, never silently resolved here; inline flags (⚠) mark the rows they touch. Amendment (Jason's ruling, Oct 19, 2026): career boards are Top 25 and single-season boards are Top 10. Where a tie makes a clean cut impossible, the full tie group is printed and flagged rather than sliced arbitrarily — that happens on four boards (QB Wins single-season, Receiving TDs single-season, Interceptions single-season, Defensive TDs single-season) and at the foot of two career boards (Receiving TDs, Defensive TDs).

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1. QB WINS

Basis: Wins credited to the quarterback as a starter (the Pro Football Reference "QB record" convention) — NOT team wins in games the QB appeared in. Appearance-based counts (e.g., StatMuse's games-played method: Favre 188, Earl Morrall 149) inflate totals and are not used.

Career — Top 25 (regular season)

\* Favre was on Atlanta's 1991 roster with no starts/wins there; his 186 = 160 Green Bay + 9 NY Jets + 17 Minnesota. Brady's 251 = 219 New England + 32 Tampa Bay. Rivers added zero wins in his three-game December 2025 comeback (0–3 as a starter). There is no rank 11 — the T-10 tie pushes the extension to rank 12. First below the cut: Phil Simms and Patrick Mahomes, 95 each. ⚠ Flags: Brees printed at 172 (NBC breakdown 142+30; a 171 variant circulates — see Notes D-P1). Rodgers' 163 is DERIVED (147 GB + 6 NYJ + 10 PIT in 2025, cross-checked two ways against fall-2026 reporting — see Notes D-P3). Elway printed at 148 (a 149 appearance-count variant exists — see Notes D-P2). Stafford's 120 and Flacco's 107 are likewise DERIVED by reconstruction from sourced in-season checkpoints (see Notes D-P7, D-P8) — no single source prints either final number outright.

Single season — Top 10 ⚠ NO CLEAN TOP 10 EXISTS (regular season)

Brady's 16 in 2007 (the 16–0 Patriots) is the only 16-win starter season ever. Below the 15-win tier the board collapses into a 23-way tie at 14 wins (competition rank T-5), so ranks 6–10 cannot be printed without slicing the tie arbitrarily. The full 14-win group: Terry Bradshaw (Pittsburgh, 1978); Joe Theismann (Washington, 1983); Dan Marino (Miami, 1984); Joe Montana (San Francisco, 1984 and 1990); Phil Simms (NY Giants, 1986); Mark Rypien (Washington, 1991); Steve Young (San Francisco, 1992); Kurt Warner (St. Louis, 2001); Tom Brady (New England, 2003, 2004, 2010); Peyton Manning (Indianapolis, 2005, 2009); Philip Rivers (San Diego, 2006); Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay, 2011); Patrick Mahomes (Kansas City, 2020, 2022); Jalen Hurts (Philadelphia, 2022); Sam Darnold (Minnesota, 2024; Seattle, 2025); Drake Maye (New England, 2025); Bo Nix (Denver, 2025). Traps avoided: Montana is often listed at 15 for 1984 — backup Matt Cavanaugh started one of the 15–1 49ers' wins; Montana's starter total was 14. McMahon (1985), Cunningham (1998), Roethlisberger (2004), and Brunell (1999, 13–2 — Jacksonville's 14th win was a Fiedler start) likewise split starts on 15-win teams and are not 15-win starters. Three members of the 14-group (Theismann 1983, Rypien 1991, Manning 2009) rest on team 14–2 records plus undisputed sole-starter status rather than a separately fetched starter-record line — flagged in Notes.

Postseason note: Brady holds the postseason wins record too — 35 (30 NE + 5 TB), nearly double the runner-up, Mahomes (17).

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2. PASSING YARDAGE

Career — Top 25 (regular season)

The top 10 is exactly the 60,000-yard club — No. 11 (Eli Manning, 57,023) sits 4,338 behind Marino, and Elway (51,475) is the only other man past 50,000. Through-2025 movement: Stafford's league-leading 4,707 yards in 2025 lifted him from 8th to 6th; Rivers' comeback added 544 (63,440 → 63,984), moving him past Ryan. Marino is the only top-10 passer whose career ended before 2000.

Single season — Top 10 (regular season)

Manning holds the record by one yard over Brees — and Brees owns four of the top eight seasons ever (2011, 2016, 2012, 2013). Ranks 1–2 and 5 were set in 16-game seasons; ranks 3–4 used the 17-game schedule. Next below the cut: Mahomes 5,097 (2018), Marino 5,084 (1984). The 2025 league leader (Stafford, 4,707) comes nowhere close. Pre-2021 lists circulating online omit Brady 2021 and Mahomes 2022 and mis-rank this board by two spots.

Postseason note: Brady, 13,400 postseason passing yards in 48 playoff games — nearly double the runner-up (Peyton Manning, 7,339).

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3. PASSING TOUCHDOWNS

Career — Top 25 (regular season)

Only five quarterbacks have reached 500 — then an 83-TD cliff to Rivers at 425. The 6–9 cluster is separated by seven TDs and moved in 2025: Rivers' comeback added 4 (421 → 425) to reclaim 6th; Stafford's career-high, league-leading 46 lifted him past Marino and Roethlisberger. No ties anywhere in ranks 11–25 — every total is distinct. Stale-crawl trap: a pre-2025 StatMuse crawl shows Cousins tied with Unitas at 290 and Mahomes at 263; Cousins threw 8 TDs in 2025 to reach 298 alone, and Mahomes is 267.

Single season — Top 10 (regular season, ties shown)

Marino's 48 came in his second season (1984) and stood as the record until Manning's 49 in 2004. There is no rank 6 — the T-5 tie at 48 pushes the next tier to T-7. Next below the cut: a three-way tie at 43 (Brady 2021, Brees 2012, Burrow 2024).

Postseason note: Brady, 88 postseason passing TDs — more than 40 clear of the runner-up (Mahomes, 46, through the 2025 season; Kansas City missed the 2025 playoffs).

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4. RECEIVING YARDAGE

Career — Top 25 (regular season)

First man out: Davante Adams, 12,633 (26th). Boldin (13,779) and Ellard (13,777) are separated by two yards at 14–15. No active player was within 1,200 yards of the top 10 through 2025; Evans, at 21st, is the highest active on this board.

Single season — Top 10 (regular season)

Smith-Njigba's 2025 season (1,793) is the newest entry on any receiving board — 8th all-time. (A stale Dec-2025 list that omits him and misplaces Bruce/Lamb was rejected — see Notes.)

Postseason note: Rice holds the playoff receiving-yardage record too — 2,245 yards (Kelce 2nd at 2,078 through the 2025 playoffs; Kelce leads playoff receptions, 178 to Rice's 151, but not yards or TDs).

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5. RECEIVING TOUCHDOWNS

Career — Top 25 (regular season) ⚠ foot of the board slices a tie — full tie group printed

Adams' 117 = 103 through 2024 + 14 with the Rams in 2025. The T-23 tie at 84 spans board positions 23–26, so a strict 25-man cut would silently drop one of the four — all four are printed. Research catch: StatMuse's career receiving-TD lists omit Tommy McDonald entirely; his 84 is confirmed by The Football Database, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the Eagles' own site (see Notes). Boundary watch (checked specifically): Tyreek Hill is OUT of both receiving top 25s on yardage and outside this board — an injury-shortened 2025 (4 games) leaves him at 11,363 yards / 83 TDs; Travis Kelce is out of the TD board (82) though he makes the yardage board at 23rd.

Single season — Top 10 ⚠ NO CLEAN TOP 10 EXISTS (regular season)

Moss 23 and Rice 22 (in a 12-game, strike-shortened season) are the only 20+ seasons ever; third place is a three-way tie at 18. Below that, ten player-seasons are tied at 17 (T-6, board positions 6–15) — the full tie group is printed because any five-man cut would be arbitrary. Moss is the only player with two 17-TD seasons, and the tie reaches back to Hutson's 1942.

Postseason note: Rice again — 22 career playoff receiving TDs, the record (Kelce 2nd with 20 through the 2025 playoffs; Gronkowski 3rd with 15).

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6. RUSHING YARDAGE AND TOUCHDOWNS

6A. Rushing Yardage — Career Top 25 (regular season)

Henry entered the top 10 in 2025 (1,595 yards on 307 carries for Baltimore), passing Tony Dorsett (12,739, now 11th) and Jim Brown (12,312). Stale-list warning: pre-/mid-2025 lists show Henry at 12,052 / 12,230 / 12,294 — all superseded (see Notes D-R1/D-R2). ⚠ Steven Jackson is printed at 11,438 (PFR family, StatMuse, Lindy's); The Football Database and SOG print 11,435 on one fewer carry — genuine split, rank unaffected either way (see Notes D-R7).

6A. Rushing Yardage — Single-Season Top 10

Nine 2,000-yard seasons exist — Simpson's came in a 14-game season (1973) — and Campbell's 1,934 closes the top 10, 69 yards behind the club.

6B. Rushing Touchdowns — Career Top 25 (regular season)

Henry's climb is the through-2025 story of this category: 90 with Tennessee through 2023, +16 in 2024, +16 in 2025 = 122, passing Peterson for 4th. Josh Allen at 23rd is a quarterback — the only non-running-back on the board. (One source list prints Allen's Buffalo start as 2017; he debuted in 2018 — see Notes D-R8.)

6B. Rushing Touchdowns — Single-Season Top 10

The five-way tie at 21 fills board positions 6–10 exactly — no arbitrary cut. Next below: Larry Johnson, 20 (Kansas City, 2005). Smith and Holmes are the only men with two seasons on this board. Postseason notes (rushing): Emmitt Smith holds both career playoff rushing records — 1,586 yards (Franco Harris 2nd, 1,556) and 19 rushing TDs ⚠ (Harris and Thurman Thomas next at 16 each, single-source — see Notes U-R1). The single-postseason rushing-TD mark is Terrell Davis's 8 in the 1997 playoffs ⚠ (secondary sources — see Notes U-R2); Davis also ran for 1,140 yards in just 8 career playoff games.

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7. SACKS

Provenance — era-bound stat, read first: The sack is an official NFL statistic only since 1982. Nothing recorded before 1982 counts in the official record book. The tables below are the OFFICIAL lists. Pre-1982 pass rushers appear only in the clearly labelled UNOFFICIAL note (§7.4), built from Pro Football Reference's retroactive film research (John Turney / Pro Football Researchers Association, published 2021) — unofficial figures are never merged into the official tables.

7.1 Career — Official Top 25 (regular season)

Miller's 9.0 sacks for Washington in 2025 moved him from 129.5 into the tie with Ware — the only top-10 change caused by the 2025 season; pre-2025 lists showing Miller at 123.5 are stale. 2026-contamination warning: live leaderboards already fold in 2026 stats (T.J. Watt shown at 119.5, Campbell at 118.0). Through end-2025, Campbell's 117.0 is No. 25 and Watt (115.0) is No. 26 — he does not make this board. Taylor's 132.5 and Jackson's 128.0 are official-era totals excluding their unofficial 1981 rookie sacks (9.5 and 8.0, PFRA research). ⚠ Suggs is printed at 139.0 (PFR and all other sources); one major list (PFN) prints "193.0" — a typo, flagged in Notes D-D3.

7.2 Single season — Official Top 10 (regular season)

The record changed in 2025. Strahan set 22.5 in 2001; Watt matched it in 2021 (in 15 games). Garrett broke the tie outright in Week 18 of the 2025 season — his 23rd sack, of Joe Burrow in Cincinnati. Any list still calling Strahan/Watt the record holders is out of date as of this snapshot. (One low-authority roundup claims Garrett finished at 23.5 — UNVERIFIED, contradicted by ESPN, the Browns, and AP-style reporting at 23.0; see Notes D-D2.) White's 21.0 came in a 12-game strike season (1987). The four 20.5 seasons fill board positions 9–12, so the top-10 cut again runs through a tie — all four are printed; J.J. Watt is the only player with two 20.5-sack seasons.

7.3 Postseason note — Sacks

Postseason: The career postseason sack record belongs to Willie McGinest (New England/Cleveland) — printed as 16.5 by PFN/PFR-derived reporting and as 16 by Wikipedia, the Patriots Hall of Fame, and SI ⚠ (the half-sack is genuinely inconsistent across sources; see Notes D-D5). Bruce Smith is 2nd with 14.5.

7.4 UNOFFICIAL pre-1982 — NOT official records

Retroactive film accounting (PFR/Turney/PFRA) credits: Deacon Jones 173.5 career sacks (Rams/Chargers/Washington, 1961–1974) — which would rank 3rd on a merged list, but he is not 3rd officially and must never be printed as such; Jack Youngblood 151.5; Alan Page 148.5. The same accounting raises Lawrence Taylor from 132.5 official to 142.0 (his 9.5 rookie sacks came in 1981, pre-official). Unofficial single-season: Al "Bubba" Baker, 23.0 for the 1978 Lions — equal to Garrett's official mark, but unofficial and not recognised by the NFL; Deacon Jones is credited with 22.0-sack seasons in 1964 and 1968 (14-game schedules).

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8. INTERCEPTIONS

Provenance: Interceptions have been an official NFL statistic since the league began tracking them in 1940 (AFL statistics 1960–69 are recognised post-merger). There is no 1982-style cutoff: this career list legitimately spans the 1940s to today.

8.1 Career — Top 25 (regular season)

Context: no active player has 40 career interceptions as of this snapshot — this top 25 has been effectively frozen for a decade, and the five-man tie at 57 (T-13) is the board's centre of gravity.

8.2 Single season — Top 10 ⚠ NO CLEAN TOP 10 EXISTS (regular season)

Lane's 14 came as a rookie in a 12-game season and has never been matched. There are 13 player-seasons of 12+ interceptions, not 10 — a nine-way tie at 12 occupies board positions 5–13, so the board is printed in full rather than cut mid-tie. Hayes's 13 (1980) is the closest modern approach; the most recent double-figure season, Trevon Diggs's 11 (Dallas, 2021), does not reach this table.

Postseason note: The career postseason interception record is 9, shared by four players — Charlie Waters (Dallas), Bill Simpson (LA Rams/Buffalo), Ronnie Lott, and Ed Reed (who tied it in Super Bowl XLVII). The regular-season king, Krause, does not hold the postseason mark.

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9. DEFENSIVE TOUCHDOWNS

Basis — read before using (the most source-sensitive category in this pack): A defensive touchdown = a touchdown scored on an interception return or a fumble return, regular season. Blocked-kick returns, blocked-punt returns, punt returns, and kick returns are excluded, even when the scorer was a defensive player. Many sources (including Pro Football Hall of Fame pages and Wikipedia infoboxes) use a loose all-returns basis; on that basis the same players show HIGHER totals — Ken Houston 12 (not 10), Ronde Barber 14 (not 12), Ed Reed 13 (not 9). Do not mix bases within a table. Full basis comparison in Notes D-D1.

9.1 Career — Top 25, strict basis (regular season) ⚠ foot of the board slices a tie — see note

The record is a three-way tie at 13 — lists naming only the two Woodsons are incomplete. Rod Woodson's 12 interception-return TDs are the outright pick-six record; Jason Taylor's 6 fumble-return TDs are the most in the table. (Talib was traded to Miami in 2019 but never appeared in a game for the Dolphins, so Miami is not listed.) Tie amputation, flagged honestly: the T-15 group at 8 (board positions 15–21) is the last clean cutoff on this board. The T-22 group at 7 runs past position 25 — also verified at 7, but outside the printed 25: Ty Law (7+0), Otis Smith (7+0), Lem Barney (7+0), Herb Adderley (7+0), Bill Thompson (3+4), Lemar Parrish (4+3), Anthony Parker (4+3). ⚠ The FR components for Green, Bell, and Barnes rest on the StatMuse split table alone and are flagged single-source in Notes D-D10 (McDaniel's 6+2 was independently confirmed against PFR's scoring table at compile) — all four players' totals and INT components are two-source corroborated.

9.2 Single season — Top 10 ⚠ CORRECTED + NO CLEAN TOP 10 EXISTS, strict basis (regular season)

⚠ CORRECTION (Oct 19, 2026, extension pass): earlier editions of this board listed the T-3 group at 4 with three members. It has four — Janoris Jenkins scored 4 defensive TDs as a rookie in 2012 (3 INT + 1 FR), verified against Bleacher Report's PFR Play Index / ESPN Stats & Info accounting ("only five players since 1920 have recorded four or more defensive touchdowns in a season" — Houston, Kearney, Allen, Brooks, Jenkins; Bland became the sixth in 2023). Jenkins is board position 6. The Bland record, stated precisely: Bland's five interception-return TDs in 2023 are the outright single-season pick-six record. For all defensive TDs, his 5 only ties Houston's 1971 total (4 pick-sixes + 1 fumble return — some accounts describe Houston's fifth TD as a blocked-field-goal return; the statistical record scores it as a fumble return, so his strict total of 5 stands). Copy crediting Bland with the outright defensive-TD season record is wrong. ⚠ Brooks is printed at 4 (Bucs official site + Football Database); a claim of 5 appears to fold in his Super Bowl XXXVII pick-six — postseason, excluded here (see Notes D-D6). Below T-3 there is no top 10: the next tier is 3 defensive TDs, a tie so large it fills board positions 7–25 and beyond. Verified 3-TD seasons (panel, not a ranking — the tie extends past this panel; e.g., 3-pick-six seasons by Herb Adderley 1965, Lem Barney 1967, Ronnie Lott 1981, and Deion Sanders 1994 also belong to it): Jimmy Hitchcock (Minnesota, 1998, 3+0); Shawn Springs (Seattle, 1998, 2+1); Mike A. Jones (St. Louis Rams, 1999, 2+1); Eric Allen (Oakland, 2000, 3+0); Darren Sharper (Green Bay, 2004, 2+1); Adalius Thomas (Baltimore, 2005, 1+2); Antrel Rolle (Arizona, 2007, 3+0); Nick Collins (Green Bay, 2008, 3+0); Ed Reed (Baltimore, 2008, 2+1); Darren Sharper (New Orleans, 2009, 3+0); Charles Woodson (Green Bay, 2009, 3+0); Charles Tillman (Chicago, 2012, 3+0); DeAngelo Hall (Washington, 2013, 2+1); William Gay (Pittsburgh, 2014, 3+0); Eddie Jackson (Chicago, 2018, 2+1); Marcus Peters (Baltimore / Los Angeles Rams, 2019, 3+0); Troy Hill (Los Angeles Rams, 2020, 2+1); Darius Slay (Philadelphia, 2021, 1+2); Kyle Dugger (New England, 2022, 2+1).

Postseason note: The postseason record holder is nowhere near the regular-season top 25 — Asante Samuel returned 4 interceptions for touchdowns in the playoffs (New England/Philadelphia), the most postseason pick-sixes ever; his regular-season career total on the strict basis is only 4 interception-return TDs in total.

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— End of The Records (NFL). Companion files: nfl-rafters-championships.md (The Rafters) and nfl-sources-and-notes.md (verification trail). —

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