Stats that stand out from the 2013 NFL regular season…
4: That's the number of 5,000-yard seasons Drew Brees has now put together after throwing for 5,162 yards in 2013. Of the eight 5,000-yard seasons in NFL history, Brees has exactly half of them. Nobody else in the league has ever gone over the 5,000-yard mark more than once.
2: That's the number of quarterbacks who posted passer ratings above 115.0. Nick Foles finished at 119.2 and Peyton Manning came in at 115.1. Prior to this year, only three quarterbacks in NFL history had hit that mark.
606: That's the number of points the Denver Broncos scored, an NFL record. Peyton Manning also set new records for touchdown passes (55) and passing yards (5,477).
13: That's the number of running backs who hit 1,000 yards. Sixteen backs did so last year. In 2006, 23 backs hit that plateau. And dating back to the turn of the century, we've never had a year in which fewer than 15 players hit the 1,000-yard mark…until now.
46.8: That's the average number of points that were scored per game, which was up more than a point from 45.6 last season and is a new NFL record. Since the 1970 merger, that was the first time we had surpassed the 45.0 mark. Since 2009, we've literally been adding close to one point per game per season. It's gone from 43.0 in '09 to 44.0 in 2010 to 44.4 in 2011 to 45.6 in 2012 to 46.8 in 2013. It's only a matter of time before we break into the 50s.
86.5: That was the average field goal success percentage, league-wide, which was actually up 2.6 points from last season. There were only six misses on 242 attempts inside 30 yards, and kickers hit 93 percent of their kicks inside 40 yards. It's not even a challenge anymore. In fact, they hit 67 percent of their field goals from beyond 50 yards. That's a mark that had never been reached on field goals of any length until the 1981 season. A record 99.6 extra points were converted this year.
84.1: That was the league-wide passer rating, which was the highest in NFL history. In 1978, Roger Staubach led the NFL with an 84.9 rating.
