Drew Brees Breaks Dan Marino's NFL Single-Season Passing Yards Record

New Orleans Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees has broken Dan Marino’s NFL record for passing yards in a season.

Brees’ year has been one for the ages. From being in the middle of negotiations between players and owners during the lockout, to communicating to fans around the world what progress was being made (or not made) while we all waited, to lighting up defenses after the lockout ended, he has done it all in 2011.

In the Saints’ critical Week 16 game against the Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football, Brees needed just 305 passing yards to surpass the NFL record of 5,084 yards set by Marino in 1984.

It was not as easy as everyone expected it would be. In the first half Brees threw for 230 yards, leaving him just 75 yards shy of the mark. The Atlanta defense was stingy enough to limit him to 45 passing yards up until the four-minute mark of the fourth.

The moment came with 2:51 remaining in the game. The raucous home crowd in New Orleans erupted as Brees found running back Darren Sproles on a nine-yard touchdown strike, putting him at 5,087 yards for the year. The game was stopped for a brief celebration immediately following the score as teammates mugged him on the field.

The record stood for 27 years; perhaps a surprise because of the rules changes the league adopted that has made defending the passing game harder to manage than the pigeon population in the US.

New York Jets' great Joe Namath became the first player in league history to throw for better than 4,000 yards in a season when he totaled 4,007 yards through the air in 1967. That record lasted until 1979, when Dan Fouts threw for 4,082 yards for San Diego.

Fouts would go on to break the record in three consecutive seasons, throwing for 4,715 yards in 1980 and 4,802 yards in 1981—the latter being the very record Marino would himself break just three years later.

Since Namath first cracked the 4,000-yard threshold nearly a half-century ago, 44 quarterbacks have topped the mark a total of 91 times. That’s right. In 45 years, his record has slipped to the 92nd-best passing season of all-time.

Fast forward to 2008. Brees, in his third season in the Bayou, became the second player ever to amass 5,000 passing yards in a season. He came up short on the record, finishing with 5,069 yards and falling just 15 yards short of Marino’s magical 1984 campaign.

This season he has been on a tear. Coming into play in Week 16, Brees had exceeded 300 passing yards in 11 of the Saints' 14 games—twice eclipsing 400 yards. Now he is the first player in NFL history to surpass 5,000 yards passing twice.

Bien fait, monsieur.