“I Got to 525 Yards in 2021 Against the Ravens”: Joe Burrow Reflects on Chasing Norm Van Brocklin’s 74-Year-Old Record

Following a historic 2024 regular season campaign that resulted in an MVP snub, Joe Burrow has now turned his attention towards the upcoming 2025 season. Despite leading the NFL in pass attempts, pass completions, passing yards, and passing touchdowns, the pride of Cincinnati maintains that he is not big on individual statistics.

Unfortunately, his elite-level performances were often subdued by the Bengals’ defense, a unit that allowed 434 total points throughout this past season. During a recent appearance on the Pardon My Take podcast, the possibility of breaking Norm Van Brocklin’s all-time passing yards in a single-game record was floated by the LSU legend.

For the unversed, Brocklin(Los Angeles Rams), all the way back in 1951, threw for a whopping 554 yards against the New York Yanks. Highlighting that he came close to Brocklin’s record once before, Burrow also drew comparisons to other all-time passing performances.

“I got to 525 in 2021 against the Ravens, so I think I’m third on that list(Matt Schaub and Warren Moon collectively hold the 2nd spot with 527 yards). But it would be nice to have a 600-yard game, that would be pretty cool.

With a career average of 275.4 passing yards per game, Burrow is likely one of the few active NFL quarterbacks who would actually be capable of breaking the record, especially when considering the amount of weapons that are at his disposal. However, he made sure to remind everyone that it’s hard to have hope for individual statistics while also prioritizing winning.

“Stats are going to fluctuate year to year really… You could throw for four touchdowns in the first quarter and the game’s over but you threw for 170 yards and now you’re not really throwing it anymore.”

During his 2021 performance against the Ravens, Burrow harvested 525 passing yards and four passing touchdowns while completing 37 passes en route to a 41-21 victory. His primary target that day, Tee Higgins, finished with 197 receiving yards and two receiving touchdowns while snagging 12 catches.

Burrow remembers Mahomes’ historic performance in college

Keeping in line with the theme of all-time passing performances, Burrow highlighted the historic FBS showdown between Texas Tech and Oklahoma. With a final score of 66-59, the 2016 matchup, which featured Patrick Mahomes going toe-to-toe with Baker Mayfield, is fondly remembered as one of the most exciting games in the history of the gridiron.

Mahomes had like a 700-yard game in college… That’s crazy!”

While Burrow certainly has the best situation to naturally come across a record book performance, he’s not the only signal caller in today’s game who has proven himself capable of breaking Brocklin’s record. There are currently five active QBs who have surpassed the 500 passing yards mark in a game, those being Matthew Stafford, Jared Goff, Derek Carr, Kirk Cousins, and Dak Prescott.

Apart from Burrow, the most recent addition to the list came when Jared Goff completed 45 passes for a total of 517 passing yards and two passing touchdowns during a 55-40 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2019.

Regardless of whether he should have won the 2024 regular season NFL MVP award or not, the prestige of Burrow is undeniable. Despite the ambiguous nature of Higgins’ ongoing contract negotiations with the team, Burrow’s career completion percentage of 68.6% marks an all-time career-best record, implying that he is likely to continue posting monstrous numbers regardless of what his receiving core may look like.