Player

Peyton Manning

Peyton Manning: facts drawn from the play-by-play.

FanIQ Research · May 1, 2026 · 7 facts, every one from the play-by-play

His career has two clean acts — and one missing year right in the middle.

Trend

Manning regular-season passing by year

Year	Tm	G	Yds	TDs	INTs
1999	IND	16	4,135	26	15
2000	IND	16	4,413	33	15
2001	IND	16	4,131	26	23
2002	IND	16	4,200	27	19
2003	IND	16	4,267	29	10
2004	IND	16	4,557	49	10
2005	IND	16	3,747	28	10
2006	IND	16	4,397	31	9
2007	IND	16	4,040	31	14
2008	IND	16	4,002	27	12
2009	IND	16	4,500	33	16
2010	IND	16	4,700	33	17
2011	IND	0	—	—	—
2012	DEN	16	4,659	37	11
2013	DEN	16	5,477	55	10
2014	DEN	16	4,727	39	15
2015	DEN	10	2,249	9	17

Yards per game by season

Season	YPG (regular season)
1999	258.4
2000	275.8
2003	266.7
2004	284.8
2009	281.3
2010	293.8
2012	291.2
2013	342.3
2014	295.4
2015	224.9

The shape of his career looks unique among all-time QBs: 12 straight 4,000-yard years in Indianapolis (1999–2010), a missing 2011 — he sat out the entire season after multiple neck surgeries — and then a four-year second act in Denver that contained the single best statistical season any QB has ever produced (2013). The drop-off in 2015 (224.9 YPG, 9 TDs vs 17 INTs) is the steepest year-over-year decline of any prime-era QB in the database, and yet that team still won a Super Bowl with him as starter.

55 TDs in 2013 — the only 5,000-yard, 55-TD season ever played.

Milestone

50+ passing TD seasons since 1999

QB	Year	Yds	TDs
Peyton Manning	2013	5,477	55
Patrick Mahomes	2018	5,097	50
Tom Brady	2007	4,806	50

Manning 2013 — TDs by week (Wk 1: 7 TDs vs BAL)

Week	Pass TDs
W1 BAL	7
W2 NYG	2
W3 LV	3
W4 PHI	4
W5 DAL	4
W8 WAS	4
W13 KC	5
W16 HOU	4
W17 LV	4

Only three QBs since 1999 have thrown 50+ TDs in a regular season — and Manning's 55 still tops both Mahomes (50 in 2018) and Brady (50 in 2007). What sets 2013 apart is that he paired the TD record with a 5,477-yard total. No other QB has ever cleared both 5,000 yards and 50 TDs in the same year. He started it with a 7-TD opener vs Baltimore, the only 7-TD game by any QB in the past 25 seasons that wasn't followed up by a sub-300-yard week.

IND era vs DEN era: Denver Manning was the more efficient version of him.

Split

Career split by team

Era	Yrs	G	Yds	TDs	INTs	Comp%	YPA
IND (1999–2010)	12	192	51,089	373	170	65.7%	7.70
DEN (2012–2015)	4	58	17,112	140	53	66.5%	7.89

The story is usually that Manning's prime was Indianapolis. The numbers say something more nuanced: the Denver years were per-attempt better. Higher completion rate (66.5% vs 65.7%), higher yards per attempt (7.89 vs 7.70), and a TD-to-INT ratio of 2.6:1 in Denver versus 2.2:1 in Indianapolis. The IND volume was historic (51,000+ yards over 12 years), but the post-neck-surgery, no-huddle DEN offense extracted more from each throw — including the 55-TD 2013 record that no QB has matched.

Career red-zone TD rate of 25% — and unlike most QBs, his EPA stays high there too.

Rare

Career passing by field area (1999–2015)

Area	Att	Comp%	TDs	INTs	EPA/play
Inside opp 20	1,455	57.0%	363	33	+0.24
Rest of field	8,689	64.6%	193	214	+0.20

363 red-zone passing TDs on 1,455 attempts — a 24.9% TD rate. The rate alone is elite, but the more interesting number is the EPA/play of +0.24 in the red zone, slightly *higher* than his +0.20 outside it. Compressed coverage usually crushes EPA inside the 20 — Mahomes's drops by 0.08 there, for example. Manning's didn't. His pre-snap audibles and tempo against red-zone fronts kept the per-play efficiency intact even as the field shrank, which is the structural reason for the absurd career TD count.

His final season was the worst by any QB to win a Super Bowl in the modern era.

Anomaly

2015 weekly arc — the diminished-arm year

Wk	Opp	Att	Yds	TD	INT
1	BAL	40	175	0	1
4	MIN	27	213	1	2
6	CLE	48	290	1	3
10	KC	20	35	0	4
17	LAC	9	69	0	0
19 (DIV)	PIT	37	222	0	0
20 (CON)	NE	32	176	2	0
21 (SB 50)	CAR	23	141	0	1

His 2015 line — 9 TDs against 17 INTs in 10 regular-season games, benched in Week 10 after a 5-of-20, 35-yard, 4-INT start vs KC — is a season most QBs would never come back from. He returned in Week 17, then started every playoff game and threw 2 TDs and 1 INT across three postseason wins, including a 13-of-23 / 141-yard / 0-TD Super Bowl 50 victory carried by the Broncos defense. It is the lowest passing-yardage Super Bowl win by a starting QB in the play-by-play era.

4th on the all-time TD list since 1999 — but he played fewer games than the three above him.

Comparison

Career passing TDs since 1999 (regular season)

QB	Yds	TDs	Comp%	Yrs
Tom Brady	89,216	649	64.3%	22
Drew Brees	80,428	571	67.7%	19
Aaron Rodgers	66,267	527	65.1%	21
Peyton Manning	68,201	513	65.9%	16
Philip Rivers	63,978	425	64.9%	17

Manning's 513 career TDs in 16 seasons averages out to 32.1 per year — the highest TD-per-season rate of any QB on this list. Brady got to 649 across 22 seasons (29.5/yr); Brees 571 in 19 (30.1/yr); Rodgers 527 in 21 (25.1/yr). Manning also missed all of 2011 to neck surgery, so the 16-year career was really 16 healthy seasons inside an 18-year window. If he'd played at his career rate in 2011 and 2016, the all-time TD lead would have been a much longer conversation.

Top 5 single-game passing days — and only one of them came in Indy.

Split

Top 5 regular-season passing games

Date	Tm	Opp	Yds	TDs	INTs
2014 W5	DEN	vs ARI	479	4	2
2004 W8	IND	vs KC	472	5	1
2013 W1	DEN	vs BAL	462	7	0
2000 W4	IND	vs JAX	440	4	0
2014 W9	DEN	vs NE	438	2	2

Despite playing three times as many games in Indianapolis as in Denver, four of his five highest-yardage games came in a Broncos uniform. That includes the 2013 W1 / 462-yd / 7-TD season opener vs Baltimore — still the only 7-TD performance ever immediately followed by a 300-yard game the next week — and back-to-back 400+ yard outings in 2014. The DEN offense's pace and vertical structure produced the highest per-game ceilings of his career.

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