In only his third season as an NFL starter and the first that he has played all 16 games, Matthew Stafford put up video game numbers. He threw for 5,038 yards and 41 touchdown passes. The NFL became an extremely pass-happy league this past season, but Stafford is only the fourth player ever to throw for more than 5,000 yards in a season, with Drew Brees having done it twice and Tom Brady and Dan Marino once each. You could argue that puts Stafford in pretty impressive company, but Hall of Fame running back Marshall Faulk is not impressed.
“Throwing for 5,000 yards in the NFL right now is nothing,” Faulk said according to MLive.com. “I don’t want to take anything away from it. As much as people throw the football now, you better have 5,000 (yards) if you have Calvin Johnson.”
Spoken like a true running back. Teams obviously do pass a lot more, but if throwing for 5,000 yards is “nothing” I’m not sure why only three other quarterbacks have done it in the history of the game. Does having Megatron help? Of course, but we’ve seen superstar receivers do absolutely nothing on many occasions because they have lousy quarterbacks throwing it to them.
Throwing for 5,000 yards will probably become more common now that teams have made passing a focal point, but that doesn’t mean those who accomplish the feat don’t deserve credit. It’s not a coincidence that the four people to do it are Stafford and three Hall of Famers.
