Andrew Luck Could Break Peyton's New Touchdown Record

Unless you have lived under a rock since Saturday, then you know Peyton Manning broke Brett Favre’s touchdown record on Sunday versus the San Francisco 49ers.Manning now has 510 career passing touchdowns. Favre is second with 508 touchdowns.

Let’s go back to 2011 when Peyton Manning played for the Indianapolis Colts. He missed all of the 2011 season with a severe neck injury. No one knew if Peyton Manning would come back and play football again. Then on March 7, 2012 the Colts released Peyton. The Colts had the first overall pick in the 2012 draft and were ready to move on from their franchise quarterback of Manning, and draft Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck. Andrew coming out of college was suppose to be the next Peyton Manning. One of the most NFL ready quarterbacks to come out of college in awhile. Peyton and Andrew were also both selected first overall in there respected draft classes.

Peyton and his brother Eli have a quarterback camp in the summer that Andrew Luck attended when he was younger. Peyton’s dad Archie Manning played for the Houston Oilers for 2 years (1982-1983) and was replaced as starting quarterback by Andrew’s dad, Oliver Luck. So as you can see the Luck and Manning family has been tied together for decades. Mainly Mannings have been replaced by the Lucks, one on the Oilers and one for the Colts. Now Andrew Luck has a good chance to replace Manning again on the career touchdown list. Here is the quarterbacks first three NFL seasons:

Manning:

Age    Year     Yards   Touchdowns

 22    1998     3,739        26

 23    1999     4,135        26

 24    2000     2,150        15    (through 7 first games)

                        Total   10,024     67

              Luck:

              Age    Year     Yards   Touchdowns

               23    2012     4,374        23

               24    2013     3,822        23

               25    2014     2,331        19

                      Total    10,527      65

Luck has only played 7 games so far this year. So in 2000 Manning’s first 7 games he had 2,150 yards and 15 touchdowns. Manning ended the 2000 season with 4,413 yards and 33 touchdowns. Manning led the league in yards and touchdowns. So far this year Luck leads the league in yards and touchdowns. Luck is on pace to throw for 5,328 yards (which would only be about 100 yards less than the record of yards in the season, held by none other than Peyton) and 43 touchdowns this year. So far for both Manning and Luck have very similar numbers through their first three NFL seasons.

As you can see from my the chart Manning was 22 years old when he started and Luck was 23. As I stated earlier that Manning missed all of the 2011 season, so Manning and Luck could be playing at the even amount of years now. Manning is also only about 5,000 passing yards away from becoming the all time leader in passing, which Luck has a chance of beating him at that record too. We have a long way to wait to find out, but until then Luck and Manning could find something else to have in common.