Due to their amazing success, both in wins and stats, and the fact that they appear to be in their prime at roughly the same time, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning seem destined to always be tied together.

Sunday, October 28th, 2007 saw both Manning and Brady win their games becoming the first quarterbacks to beat all 31 other teams in the league during their career (the Patriots beat the Redskins while the Colts beat the Panthers). It looks as though Peyton Manning will go down in the record books as the first player to do it since the Colts’ game was played and finished earlier in the day than the Patriots’ game.

The NFL played its first regular season game outside of the United States today when the New York Giants defeated the winless Miami Dolphins in London, England. The first regular season game played outside the USA? That opens up a whole bunch of new trivia!

First team to win a regular season game outside of the USA: New York Giants

First rushing touchdown in a regular season game outside of the USA: Eli Manning

First passing touchdown in a regular season game outside of the USA: Cleo Lemon

First receiving touchdown in a regular season game outside of the USA: Ted Ginn, Jr.

First field goal in a regular season game outside of the USA: Lawrence Tynes

Those will be hard to find facts in a couple years!

One of the common stories concerning Tom Brady is that the New England Patriots were able to get this future Super Bowl MVP in the sixth round of the NFL Draft taking him with the 199th pick. While it is obvious now that the pick was a steal… what other team wouldn’t love to have Tom Brady, but passed on him, you have to also remember that it wasn’t exactly a quarterback-rich draft that year.

Only one quarterback was drafted in the first round: Chad Pennington, by the New York Jets with the 18th overall pick.

This is a far cry from the year Dan Marino was taken as the fifth quarterback in the first round, or even when Peyton Manning and (sigh) Ryan Leaf were drafted back-to-back with the first and second overall picks in the draft.

How many quarterbacks were selected ahead of Tom Brady?

Chad Pennington - 1st Round - 18th Pick - New York Jets
Giovanni Carmazzi - 3rd Round - 65th Pick - San Francisco 49ers
Chris Redman - 3rd Round - 75th Pick - Baltimore Ravens
Tee Martin - 5th Round - 163rd Pick - Pittsburgh Steelers
Marc Bulger - 6th Round - 168th Pick - New Orleans Saints
Spergon Wynn - 6th Round - 183rd Pick - Cleveland Browns

Not taking anything away from the Patriots, but as you can see from that class of quarterbacks there weren’t many gems there… only Pennington and Bulger went on to accomplish anything. Plus when you factor that the Patriots also passed on Tom Brady for the first five rounds you can see that they too didn’t entirely see the potential that he had… there is a lot of luck in drafting good players.

Players the Patriots took in the 2000 Draft before they took Tom Brady:

2nd Round - Adrian Klemm - Tackle - University of Hawaii
3rd Round - J.R. Redmond - Running Back - Arizona State University
4th Round - Greg Robinson-Randall - Tackle - Michigan State
5th Round - Dave Stachelski - Tight End - Boise State
5th Round - Jeff Marriott - Defensive Tackle - University of Missouri
6th Round - Antwan Harris - Defensive Back - University of Virginia

To a certain degree, the Patriots themselves must have thought that each of these players had more talent or would help their team more than Tom Brady would. To say that the Patriots got a steal when they drafted Tom Brady in the sixth round is an understatement and cannot be argued… to say they were smarter than anyone else by getting him there… that isn’t entirely the truth.

One of the more amazing scoring records is held by Kicker Morten Andersen. Andersen was a Kicker for the New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons, among others later in his career.

Because of his success and his longevity with both teams, at the time of his retirement from the NFL he was the all-time leading scorer in New Orleans Saints history, as well as the all-time leading scorer in Atlanta Falcons history.

For one player to hold all-time scorer records for two different franchises is actually amazing when you consider the number of franchises and the number of players who play football.