NFL Roundup: Rodgers Alone in Third, and Tampa Bay's Dozen One-Score Games
Aaron Rodgers is now alone in third place on the career touchdown pass list, having broken the tie with Peyton Manning. Only Tom Brady and Drew Brees remain in front of him. That's the accounting. The meaning is different, and bigger: Rodgers got there as the most efficient touchdown thrower of the modern passing boom, and this is the last volume record he is likely to take down.
Put him next to Manning and you get the whole shift in how the position was played between them. Manning was the coach on the field, the orchestrator at the line, the guy who beat you with information before the snap. Rodgers was the proof that mechanics and arm talent could beat a defense before it moved. Same list, two different eras. That's why the tie-breaking touchdown deserves more than a graphic on a broadcast.
My read: this record will age better than it reads today. Rodgers is at the stage where every season is a countdown, and Brees in second is genuinely reachable if he keeps playing. What makes me wrong is Rodgers himself. He has never seemed to care about accumulation, and a player who doesn't care about a record is a bad bet to chase one.
Tampa Bay has now played 12 straight one-score games, which is the number Pro Football Talk hung its joke on: if the league office had a favorite team, it would currently be the Buccaneers. The joke lands because close games are good television. The football read is less flattering.
Twelve straight one-score games isn't resilience. It's the absence of a blowout gear. A club that can't separate is a club whose season gets decided by coin flips, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been flipping that coin for three months. My read: the streak breaks within the month, and it breaks ugly, because the correction for a team like this is a Sunday where the margin gets away in the first half. What would make me wrong is the Buccaneers' defense. If it keeps stonewalling people in the red zone, the games stay close, and close games are how a mediocre record sneaks into a wild card.
On the betting side, the CBS Sports computer model published score projections and best bets for every Week 7 game. Useful as a market check. Less useful as a script. A model built on historical play-by-play is good at pace and scoring environment, which is why I trust these things on totals and distrust them on sides. It cannot see a coach punting from the opponent's 38, and it cannot see a Friday injury that never reaches the practice report. Late October supplies plenty of both.
Three notes, one thread: margin. Rodgers' record is a career measured in touchdowns. Tampa Bay's streak is a season measured in inches. The model exists because everybody wants the margin before it happens.
Here's my verdict, signed. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will win a game by more than one score before December, and the streak will look obvious in hindsight. Rodgers will pass Brees for second before he's finished, because the man has never walked away from a list he's near the top of. If he retires this spring, I'm wrong on both counts and the historians get the last word.