Peyton Manning is rooting for this year’s class of rookie quarterbacks to break one of his records.
Manning was honored at a banquet hosted by the Mizel Institute on Wednesday, and brought up his long-standing NFL rookie interception record in an interview. The legendary quarterback said that he was surprised the record still stood, and joked that he would be perfectly fine if one of this year’s rookies wanted to take it off his hands.
Peyton Manning brings up his NFL rookie-interception record: “I mean, if any one of these rookies wanted to break my interception record, I'd be for it. I don't want Bo (Nix) to break it, but I'd like to get that one off my resume. You'd think with 17 games …” pic.twitter.com/wDLJLMTSLx
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) May 23, 2024
“I played as a rookie. It was not a fun year,” Manning said. “It was well-documented how many interceptions that I threw. If any one of these rookies wanted to break my interception record, I’d be for it. I don’t want Bo (Nix) to break it, but I’d like to get that one off my resume. You’d think with 17 games, they’d be able to do it. It’s 28. It shouldn’t be that hard. But anyway, I’m over it.”
Manning’s issue, as he alluded to, is that not every quarterback plays a full season as a rookie. Nobody has come all that close to breaking Manning’s unwanted mark, with DeShone Kizer’s 22 interceptions for the Cleveland Browns in 2017 the closest anyone has come. Bryce Young led all rookie quarterbacks in interceptions in 2023, but threw only ten of them.
Starting as a rookie is not necessarily a good thing for every quarterback. NFL teams know this and try to shield them from really bad outcomes. That alone might ensure that Manning’s unwanted record holds up for a long time.
