A 17th game now is an important caveat, but Matthew Stafford’s single season pass attempt record is on an early pace to be surpassed.
During his 12 seasons as the Lions quarterback, at least one notable locally-based media member in Detroit took to calling Matthew Stafford “Stat Padford.” Yes he often put up good, and at times insignificant numbers with few wins for the team, and he didn’t win a playoff game in his career until landing with the Los Angeles Rams last year. But the Lions lack of winning has long been proven to be an institutional problem, not to be placed on any individual player.
The Arizona Cardinals are 2-2 this season, but much of their first three games were spent trailing and they’ve trailed by at least a touchdown at some point in all four of their games.
With those game scripts, quarterback Kyler Murray has a league-leading 173 pass attempts (and 113 completions) so far this season. That’s an average of 43.3 attempts per game.
Matthew Stafford’s single-season pass attempt record on early pace to fall
If Murray maintains his current pass attempt pace, he would finish the season with 735. Having a 17th game to get there is important to note, but it would be a new single-season NFL record.
In 2012, Stafford set the single-season pass attempt record with 727 (45.4 per game). The Lions finished 4-12 that season, within the obvious idea that trailing a lot forced the offense to pass a lot.
Stafford had a nearly equal touchdown-to-interception ratio in 2012 (20 touchdowns, 17 interceptions), and his passer rating (79.8) is a career low. So with the record-settingly heavy pass volume, as could be expected, came a lack of efficiency playing for a bad Lions’ squad.
If Murray does pass his record for raw pass attempts in a season, but doesn’t pass it by much more than his current pace, Stafford would still hold the single-season record for pass attempts per game (the aforementioned 45.4). So there’s that I guess, as Murray would surely like to fall off his raw attempt pace if it correlates to the Cardinals winning more games.