Peyton Manning ties NFL record with 7 touchdown passes, blows our minds

Let’s sit back for a moment and think about how rare of an evening Peyton Manning had for the Denver Broncos Thursday.

by Rodger Sherman

Sep 6, 2013, 12:00 PM UTC

Doug Pensinger

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Ravens vs. Broncos: Peyton Manning tosses 7 touchdowns in Denver’s win over defending champs

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Peyton Manning threw for seven touchdowns -- Seven. Seven! SEVEN! -- and he did it against the Baltimore Ravens in a 49-27 win. The Ravens may or may not have won the Super Bowl last year based on the strength of their defense.

Getting revenge on last year’s champs by putting up record-setting numbers in the season opener is sort of a good way to announce your championship contention. But before thinking about your fantasy team or whatever, let’s just take a second to think about how absolutely ridiculous of an outing it was:

First off: Yes, that was an NFL record for most touchdowns in a game:

The record for our #Peyton pic.twitter.com/aNd1aLOCMw
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) September 6, 2013

You might notice that none of those games have happened since the AFL-NFL merger. The Denver Broncos were not an NFL team the last time this happened. Even as the number of teams in the league has expanded, the number of games played has expanded, and the game has become more suited to offenses that throw more routinely, no quarterback -- even in games between top-notch teams and cellar-dwellers -- had done this in 44 years.

(Just to prove how ridiculous of a human being he is, Manning when prompted was able to rattle off Kapp’s alma mater, uniform number, the fact that he played in the CFL, and that he “kicked the crap out of a guy on YouTube,“ which, by the way, is true.)

But just throwing seven touchdowns isn’t cool: only Manning and Tittle managed to do it with no interceptions. Oh, we probably should have mentioned: he also had 462 yards on just 42 attempts with no interceptions. That kinda got lost in the shuffle of hyping up the fact that somebody tied a single-game record in one of the most basic stats kept in a 93-year-old league.

49 points allowed is the most in Ravens franchise history.
— Sporting News (@sportingnews) September 6, 2013

To be fair, that's not including their time as the Cleveland Browns, but still. The Ravens allowed just 21.5 points per game last year, allowing no more than 35 points -- incidentally, also the Broncos, in their double-overtime playoff game.