Baker Mayfield breaks Russell Wilson’s all-time passing record after Oklahoma’s Sugar Bowl

Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield made some history this season, and he locked it in on Monday night. Mayfield finished OU’s Sugar Bowl win against Auburn with a season-long passer rating of 196.39, unofficially.

That’s a new all-time record for FBS or Division I-A football, breaking the 191.78 Wisconsin’s Russell Wilson posted in 2011. To qualify for the NCAA’s recognized record, quarterbacks must average 15 pass attempts per game.

Mayfield’s year was remarkable, and we probably would have talked about it more if OU hadn’t started the year 1-2 and been quickly excised from Playoff contention. Mayfield was the engine behind the Sooners’ 9-0 finish to the regular season and Big 12 championship, their second title in a row. He got to New York as a Heisman finalist along with prolific receiver Dede Westbrook and finished a solid third.

For a sense of Mayfield’s singular brilliance, his rating entering Monday night was 197.75 — merely 14 full points ahead of the country’s next highest-rating qualifier, Toledo’s Logan Woodside. Mayfield boasted a 71 percent completion rate and a sterling 38-to-8 touchdowns-to-interceptions ratio during the regular season, while averaging an incredible 11.1 yards per throw. No one else was above 10.5.

Mayfield had a lot of great games. He laid particular waste to Texas Tech on Oct. 22, when he posted a stat line that’s almost unbelievable, even against a lousy defense: 27-of-36 passing for 545 yards, seven touchdowns, and no interceptions. His rating that day was 266.34.

Had Mayfield thrown 14 more passes that day, there’s a real chance he’d have broken the single-game efficiency record for someone throwing at least 50 times: a 248.0, set by West Virginia’s Geno Smith in a game against Baylor in 2012. He’ll have to settle for the season-long efficiency record instead.

Mayfield’s story is an oft-relayed but fascinating one. A former walk-on at Texas Tech, Mayfield started as a true freshman in Lubbock in 2013 but didn’t get a scholarship and transferred to OU. NCAA rules were expected to limit Mayfield to two years of actually playing for the Sooners, and the first of those was 2015.

Wanna hear something fun? Mayfield wound up getting that fourth year of game eligibility, and he’s already announced he’ll play out next season at Oklahoma.

Happy game planning, Big 12 defensive coordinators.