As you can see, Tarkenton lags quite a bit behind the other three, but of course he played in a much tougher era. He also held the touchdown crown for a record 19 years and 11 months.  And he finished strong: he threw 110 touchdowns in the last 80 games of his career (games 164-243), which is even more than Marino had (105) during games 164-263 of his career.

Marino’s incredible early start really stands out: by game 63, he was at 156 touchdowns, far ahead of Manning (109), Favre (102), and Tarkenton (91) through 63 games. It isn’t until game 179 that Manning finally passes him (340-338), while it takes Favre until game 213 (385-384) to move ahead.  Marino would also jump back ahead of Favre, ultimately finishing with 420 in 242 games; at that point, Favre was still at 414.

Manning’s trajectory is of course impressive. But it’s the shape of his career that really stands out. Consider:

• Manning played in 266 games: he threw 252 touchdowns in his first 133 games, and 287 in his final 133.
• By comparison, Favre threw 269 in his first 151 games, and 239 in his final 151, and Favre was known for his longevity!
• Marino had 245 in his first 121 games, and 175 in his final 121 games.
• Tarkenton had 182 touchdowns in his first 121 games, 3 in his 122nd game, and 157 in his final 121 games, and he was a fast finisher!

Even with his bad finish in 2015, Manning still had a remarkable run in his 30s. At the halfway mark of his career, he was a Hall of Famer, and then he was arguably better on his back nine. That’s how you go about having two HOF careers.

Finally, let’s reproduce this chart, but include Tom Brady and Drew Brees:

The most incredible part of this chart? That would be the intersection, where you can’t even see three of the quarterbacks. At game 175, Brees was at 334 touchdown passes, Marino was at 333, Manning 332, and Brady 330. That’s unreal! ^[1]Favre was at 312; Tarkenton 247. Brees is actually still ahead of Manning’s pace, with 428 passes in 217 career games. Through 217 games, Manning was at 420, Brady 414, Favre 391, Marino 387, and Tarkenton 305. Brees was 36 years and 353 days old in game 217; Manning was 36-232 (game 9 of the 2012 season) when he had his 217th game. He ended that season with 436 touchdowns and turned 37 the following March. Brees ended last year with 428 touchdowns and turned 37 the following January.

So, given that backdrop, we could make the case that Brees is on pace to break the record, although Manning set the single-season touchdown record in his next year. Still, given the way Manning fell off at age 39, it’s within reason to think that Brees could set the record with another 110 touchdowns. He’s also a year and a half younger than Brady, so he is the bigger threat to Manning’s record. He’ll need 112 more touchdowns, which would likely require four more seasons. He has shown no dropoff in play, but neither did Manning until December 2014.

Getting 62 wins is much easier the second time around

Tarkenton went 124-109-6 in his 18-year career with the Vikings and Giants. His first 62 wins took him a long time; at age 32, he was 62-86-4 after a week 6 loss to the Bears in 1972. At 24 games under .500 and with a career 0.421 winning percentage, Tarkenton was a five-time Pro Bowler with little to show for it and zero career playoff appearances.

But for the rest of his career, he won another 62 games, and he did so much quicker, going 62-23-2. That’s 41 games over .500 and a 0.724 winning percentage. That’s extremely impressive, of course, enough to make Tarkenton have a career 0.531 winning percentage. And, among quarterbacks who finished their career at .500 or better, Tarkenton is the only quarterback to ever be 24 games below .500 at any point in his career.

Although one could argue that Warren Moon had an even more remarkable career turnaround. I’ve written before about the terrible Oilers franchise that Moon joined in the mid-’80s. After 43 games, Moon had a 10-33 record. While it took Tarkenton 152 games to get to 24 games below .500, Moon was one shy of that mark in over 100 fewer games! At that point, the odds of Moon — then 30 years old — finishing his career with a winning record would have been seen as astronomically low. Yet he did just that, going 92-68 over the remainder of his career.

The table below shows all quarterbacks ^[1]Well, this includes all quarterback starts starting in 1950. who finished with a 0.500 or better career record but at one point in their career were more than five games below 0.500. Let’s use Jake Plummer as an example. For his career, he went 69-67, for a 0.507 career winning percentage. That means, at his worst, he was 22 games below 0.500, thanks to a 30-52 record (0.366) winning percentage). For the rest of his career, though, he went 39-15, for a 0.722 winning percentage for the remainder of his career. In his case, these splits can be used in a non-arbitrary way, too: they represent Plummer’s career records with the Cardinals (30-52) and Broncos (39-15).

A trio of Hall of Fame quarterbacks were stuck on three wins for a very long time. Both Bart Starr and Steve Young had just 3 wins after his first 20 games, while Troy Aikman was stuck on three after 21 games. And it gets even weirder: each quarterback won exactly 91 more games the rest of their career, with Young losing only 32 more games, Starr losing 41, and Aikman 53. I had never noticed before that all three of them won exactly 94 games in their careers, so you might be able to win some bar bets with that one.

Finally, let’s give Carson Palmer some credit. After a week 7 loss to Seattle during Palmer’s first year with the Cardinals, his career record at that point was 57-71, and he had losing records with each of the Cardinals, Raiders, and Bengals. But since then, he has gone 26-5, and had an MVP-caliber season last year. Albeit one that ended very, very badly.