According to the man himself, fans can be “pretty sure” that the 2025 regular season will be the last one of Aaron Rodgers’ 21-year stint in the National Football League. However, the future first-ballot Hall of Famer is poised to take a few more records with him on his way out the door.
In a bit of an ironic twist, Rodgers is currently gearing up to break the all-time career pass completions record of his former Super Bowl rival, Ben Roethlisberger, while being draped in his very own rendition of the Steelers’ uniform. The former Green Bay Packer has 5,359 pass completions, the seventh most of any quarterback in NFL history.
The former face of the Steelers in Big Ben currently slots just ahead of him with a career total of 5,440 pass completions, meaning that Rodgers will need just 72 completions to surpass him in the all-time rankings. Seeing as Rodgers is currently averaging 368 completions per season, it’s safe to say that he’ll shatter Roethlisberger’s record, so long as he can remain healthy.
With a current average of 21.6 completions per game, Rodgers projects to eclipse Roethlisberger’s total in Week 4 of the upcoming 2025 regular season, when the Steelers travel to Croke Park to take on the Minnesota Vikings. However, the real celebration will likely come a bit later in the season.
The top-5 rankings are guarded by the former Atlanta Falcon, Matt Ryan, and his career total of 5,551 pass completions, just 182 more than Rodgers’ current total. Should he manage to maintain his aforementioned average of 21.6 completions per game, then Rodgers should walk into Week 9 needing only 11 pass completions to produce the fifth-highest total in NFL history.
However, that’s as far as he’ll be able to climb in the rankings. The fourth overall spot is held by none other than Peyton Manning himself.
The former Indianapolis Colt managed to complete 6,125 passes throughout his 17 years in the league. Even if Rodgers was able to replicate the highest completion total of his career, 401, he would still need another 356 completions to pass Manning.
From there, things get even more unrealistic as Rodgers’ predecessor, Brett Favre, retired with a career total of 6,300 pass completions. When it comes to Tom Brady and Drew Brees, Rodgers is nowhere in sight.
The former New Orleans Saint completed 7,142 passes and was the first quarterback in NFL history to ever do so. Shortly afterwards, however, Brady would surpass him. The seven-time Super Bowl champion ultimately retired having completed 7,753 passes throughout his 23-year reign.
Rodgers will more than likely finish among the top five, but it appears as if he’ll never be able to truly catch the ghosts of the quarterbacks that he’s been in contention with from the very beginning. Nevertheless, he’ll retire amongst the greats all the same.
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