Fact Check: Did Aaron Rodgers Throw the Longest Recorded Pass Attempt Since 2017?

The Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers put on an unexpected show on Thursday Night Football. It was a gunslinging showdown between two 40-plus-year-old QBs, Aaron Rodgers and Joe Flacco. The two overcompensated, though, combining for 591 passing yards and seven touchdowns. It was such a good game that fans are calling it “The Unc Bowl.” 

Now, don’t get us wrong, there were a slew of highlights to chew on after the showdown. But perhaps the craziest of them all came on an incomplete pass. At the very end, down by two and out of field goal range, Rodgers threw a Hail Mary. It fell incomplete but traveled 69.8 yards through the air, leading to a supposed NFL record.

Claim: NFL Next Gen Stats tweeted after the game that the same 69.8 yards that the ball travelled through the air was the longest recorded pass attempt since 2017. Rodgers rolled out to his left, loaded up, and threw the ball from his own 31-yard line all the way to the front of the Bengals’ end zone. The math checks out, but was that the actual record?

Verdict: No, that wasn’t the longest recorded pass attempt since 2017. According to CBS and PFF, Baker Mayfield threw a pass that went 70.5 yards in the air back in 2020. It was another failed Hail Mary attempt that went out of the back of the endzone, but it still covered 70.5 yards in the air nonetheless.

Where the confusion may arise is through the technicality of how the stat is tracked. Next Gen Stats seems to be strictly tracking the in-play distance that Rodgers threw his ball, which, from the 31 to the goal line, is in fact 69 yards. PFF seems to have tracked the entirety of Mayfield’s pass, regardless of whether it was in play or not. 

Mayfield throws the ball from the opposing 40, so, technically, the ball only travelled 60 yards. But PFF accounted for the ball going an additional 10 yards out of the back of the end zone. With this in mind, there’s no doubt that Mayfield’s pass went farther than Rodgers’. 

So, again, when looking at it strictly from the standpoint of who threw the ball the furthest, Mayfield obviously outdid Rodgers. However, when incorporating the technicality of how the stat is sometimes tracked, Rodgers technically threw it from farther away, giving him the longest pass thrown in the field of play since 2017.

Regardless, both throws were impressive. And at the end of the day, both fell incomplete. It’s funny how we, as fans, get worked up over plays like this that never actually amount to anything. It just goes to show how much there is to get engrossed in when it comes to being an NFL fan. Sometimes, even incomplete passes can captivate us.