The 2025 regular season is just around the corner. Rosters are being trimmed, depth charts are being finalized, and fans are preparing for their fantasy football drafts and Week 1 watch parties. Football is back, and that means that opportunity is in the air, especially for the likes of some of the game’s most prominent veterans.
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The Cleveland Browns and the New York Giants are favoring proven leadership over raw potential when it comes to the quarterback position this year, naming the 40-year-old Joe Flacco and the 36-year-old Russell Wilson as their respective QB1s for the upcoming season. Both QBs were forced to compete for their jobs at one point or another throughout this offseason, and now that they’ve both prevailed, they stand a chance at making one last bit of history for themselves.
The former Seattle Seahawk is heading into the 14th season of his professional career with a grand total of 46,135 passing yards to his name. That’s good for the 17th most in NFL history, but leaves him just shy of Vinny Testaverde and Carson Palmer’s records.
Wilson needs 3,865 most passing yards to reach the 50,000 milestone. Even though he hasn’t been the most impressive quarterback in recent years, that’s still doable for Wilson, given his current metrics and the fact that he now has Malik Nabers at his disposal.
Throughout the past four seasons, Wilson is averaging 221.6 passing yards per game, which is enough to grant him 3,767.2 total passing yards across 17 games. Should he manage to stay healthy and improve upon his recent form at all, then it’s likely that a receiver of Naber’s caliber is enough to help him become just the 13th quarterback in NFL history to produce 50,000+ career passing yards.
When it comes to the former Baltimore Raven, however, there may just not be enough time left. Flacco sits just behind Wilson in the all-time rankings with a career total of 45,697 passing yards. He would need to produce 4,303 passing yards in order to reach the same milestone, and he hasn’t done that since 2016. In fact, that was the only time that he has ever thrown for 4,000+ yards in a season.
Armed with the likes of Jerry Jeudy, Cedric Tillman, Isaiah Bond, and Jamari Thrash, it would be nothing short of an absolute miracle to see Flacco surpass 3,000 passing yards, let alone 4,000. Simply put, a lack of talent, risk of injury, and the presence of both Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, all seem to suggest that this number is seemingly unobtainable.
Although, in Flacco’s defense, he’s still securing reps as a starter at the age of 40, a feat which doesn’t seem very likely for Wilson at this point in time.
