In 1959, John Unitas led the NFL in pass attempts, completions, passing yards, and passing touchdowns en route to a unanimous MVP award.  In addition, his Baltimore Colts repeated as NFL champions, capping off a brilliant season for the legendary quarterback.

Two years later, in the early days of the AFL, George Blanda was the league’s MVP as he threw for 3,330 yards (no other player had 2,700 yards) and 36 touchdowns (no other quarterback had even 20). Teaming with Bill Groman and Charley Hennigan, Houston had a dominant offense and won the AFL Championship.

But since then — which would include the entirety of the Super Bowl era — no quarterback has won the Super Bowl in the same season where he led the league in passing yards.  A similar but slightly different criteria yields a different result.  Team passing yards, as opposed to individual passing yards, has two major differences: sack yards are deducted at the team but not the individual level, and of course situations where a quarterback does not play a full season will have a much smaller impact on the team level.

In 1999, entering the final week of the season, Kurt Warner had thrown for 4,212 yards and Carolina’s Steve Beuerlein had 4,114 yards. In the final week, with the Rams having the #1 seed locked up, Warner played the first half and one series in the third quarter and threw for 141 yards; backup Joe Germaine threw for 136 yards in the second half.  Meanwhile, with the Panthers desperately trying to run up the score to win a points differential tiebreaker for the playoffs, Beuerlein threw for 322 yards and 5 touchdowns in week 17.  That allowed Beuerlein to narrowly win the passing yardage title, even though Warner + Germaine had thrown for more yards than Beuerlein.  As a result, the 1999 Rams led the NFL in passing yards, even though Warner did not.

That remains the only time in the Super Bowl era that a team or a quarterback led the league in passing yards and won the championship (several did it in the pre-Super Bowl era).  But this year, we got very, very close.  In 2020, Deshaun Watson led the NFL in passing yards, but there are a couple of things to note.  Watson took a ton of sacks; as a result, Houston finished 4th in passing yards at the team level, and it was the Chiefs and Buccaneers who finished first and second in passing yards.  A Kansas City win in Super Bowl LV would make them just the second team to lead the NFL in passing yards and also win the Super Bowl.

The other note is that Patrick Mahomes sat in week 17;  through 16 weeks, Mahomes had 4,740 passing yards to Watson’s 4,458. That is a massive lead, and Mahomes did of course finish the season first in passing yards per game.  Tom Brady finished 3rd in passing yards and the Bucs finished second overall in passing yards, again passing Houston due to sacks.

Because of Watson’s first-place rank, we avoided a lot of storylines about Mahomes and Super Bowl LV.  One lede in an alternate universe where the Texans fielded several NFL players on defense would read:

Six Have Tried And Failed: Can Mahomes Break The Super Bowl Curse?  There are 6 quarterbacks in the Super Bowl era to lead the league in passing yards and make it to the Super Bowl.  All six of those quarterbacks — Dan Marino (1984), Kurt Warner (2001, losing to Brady!), Rich Gannon (2002, losing to the Bucs!), Tom Brady (2007, actual Brady!), Peyton Manning (2013), and Tom Brady (2017, Tompa Tom!) — lost.

Of course, such articles would ignore what Warner did in 1999.  For the trivia wonks, he and Manning (’06) are the only quarterbacks to rank second in passing yards and win the Super Bowl in the same season; Mahomes ’20, of course, would become the third.  It might be worth noting that 6 other quarterbacks ranked 2nd in passing yards and lost in the Super Bowl — Tarkenton ’76, Favre ’97, Warner ’08, Manning ’09, Brady ’11, and Ryan ’16.

Individual Passing Yard Ranks

This year, with Mahomes (2nd) and Brady (3rd), the starting quarterbacks both rank in the top three in passing yards.  That has never happened before!  The closest was in 1976 and 2011, when Fran Tarkenton (2nd) and Ken Stabler (4th) and Brady (2nd) and Eli Manning (4th) nearly pulled it off.  Three other times, all in the ’90s, saw the 3rd and 4th ranked players in passing yards make the Super Bowl: Jim Kelly and Mark Rypien in ’91, Kelly and Troy Aikman in ’92, and Drew Bledsoe and Brett Favre in ’96.

Individual Passing Yards per Game Leaders

Had the Chiefs not locked up the top seed in the AFC prior to week 17, Mahomes almost certainly would have led the NFL in passing yards.  Instead, he finished 1st in passing yards per game, a similar-enough metric that we can use.  As it turns out, two other quarterbacks have led the NFL in passing yards on a per game basis in the year they won the Super Bowl.

• • In 1976, Stabler missed a week 3 game against the Oilers with a right knee injury.  And at 12-1, the Raiders rested Stabler and other starters for the finale game of the season. The 1976 season was a brutal one for quarterbacks, but a few stood out from the pack. Bert Jones led the NFL in passing yards and ANY/A, Stabler led the NFL in passing yards per game, and Fran Tarkenton (who missed one game) finished second in both passing yards and passing yards per game.  Stabler went 11-1 as the starter and led the NFL in passing yards per game, which is pretty crazy for the run-happy 1970s; of course, the ’76 Raiders were not your average 1-loss team, as their games were much closer than you would expect, which necessitated more throws from Stabler.
• • In 1989, the San Francisco 49ers clearly had the best quarterback in the NFL… and it was probably Joe Montana. Backup Steve Young started 3 games and played a big role in two others; he was absurdly inefficient over 75 pass attempts. But Montana was legendary in 1989, and when you combine his regular and postseason performances, it is arguably the top quarterback season in NFL history. The 49ers finished slightly behind Washington in team passing yards, with the difference due solely to sack yards. Even with missing half of two games, Montana narrowly edged out Don Majkowski, Jim Everett, and Mark Rypien — all four were within two yards per game of each other! — for the passing yards/game crown.

In addition to Manning ’06 and Warner ’99, Brees ’09 is the third quarterback to rank second in passing yards/game in the season they won the Super Bowl. If the Bucs win, Brady would join Joe Namath (1968) and Terry Bradshaw (1979) as quarterbacks who ranked in the top three in both passing yards and passing yards per game in seasons they won the Super Bowl.

Team Passing Yard Ranks

Finally, let’s look at things on the team level. The 2020 Chiefs are the 7th team to lead the NFL in passing yards (which again, nets out sack yards and combines the yards from all passers) and make the Super Bowl: five of the first six lost (2013 Broncos, 2007 Patriots, 2002 Raiders, 2001 Bucs, and 1984 Dolphins) with the ’99 Rams being the only winner. ^[1]These are the same teams from our fictional lede story, minus the 2017 Patriots.  Due to an extra 81 yards lost due to sacks, New England finished 13 passing yards behind the Chargers that season.

The 2020 Bucs are the 10th team to rank second in passing yards and make the Super Bowl: the results there are more even, with these strong passing teams going 4-5 in the big game. The ’06 Colts, ’89 49ers, ’79 Steelers, and ’71 Cowboys all won, while the ’17 and ’11 Patriots, ’09 Colts, ’08 Cardinals, and ’74 Vikings lost.

The two lowest-ranked teams in passing yards — which, of course, is hardly a good measure of passing quality — were the ’82 Dolphins and ’14 Seahawks, who both ranked 27th in passing yards but lost 4th quarter leads in the Super Bowl.  For Miami, that 27th-place ranking came in a 28-team league. The ’13 Seahawks (26th), ’05 Steelers (24th), and ’15 Panthers (24th) round out the bottom five teams, by rank in passing yards, to make the Super Bowl.

For Brady, his teams have now ranked in the top 3 in passing yards and made the Super Bowl 4 times, with an 0-3 record to show for it.  In the six Super Bowl wins, his Patriots ranked 4th, 8th, 9th, 9th, 11th, and 22nd in passing yards.

With Kansas City and Tampa Bay ranking first and second in passing yards, that brings a new record to Super Bowl LV.  Previously, the best combined ranks was 5, when the ’84 Dolphins (1st) and 49ers (4th) brought great passing attacks to the big game.   The Saints/Colts Super Bowl nearly matched that, as Indianapolis (2nd) and New Orleans (4th) had dominant offenses.  If you are looking for the 3 best quarterback matchups in Super Bowl history, this is a pretty good place to start: Mahomes/Brady, Marino/Montana, and Manning/Brees.