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Father Time came for Peyton Manning midway through the 2014 season, but just before he arrived he had one of his best regular season performances with the Denver Broncos. Hosting the San Francisco 49ers, Denver dominated from start to finish and along the way Manning would break Brett Favre’s all-time mark for career touchdown passes.
Coming into this game Manning needed two touchdowns to tie the record and three to break it. He wasted little time getting that going in the first quarter.
On the Broncos opening drive, he would march the Broncos down the field on a 9-play 62 yard drive that would be capped by finding a wide open Emmanuel Sanders for a three-yard touchdown pass.
After the 49ers put up a 9-play drive of their own that ended in a missed field goal attempt, Manning and the Broncos needed just three plays to go 59 yards on their second possession.
Manning found Sanders again for an 18-yard pass on the first play, then after a two yard run by Ronnie Hillman, Manning found Wes Welker open deep for a 39-yard catch and run for the record-tying touchdown.
After trading punts, the 49ers finally got on the board in the second quarter with a field goal. However, Peyton Manning wasn’t done torching them for touchdowns on this day. He and the Broncos offense put together an 11-play drive that netted just 49 yards that was capped by a third down pass to Demaryius Thomas for an eight-yard touchdown.
In typical Peyton fashion, he wasn’t done. Colin Kaepernick tossed an interception on the 49ers opening second half possession to set the Broncos up at the 49ers 40-yard line. One play later Demaryius Thomas was walking into the end zone for Manning’s fourth touchdown pass of the day.
Denver would add two more touchdowns on the ground in the second half to blowout the 49ers 42-17 to move to 5-1 on the season.
The 509th career touchdown is a record that didn’t stand for very long as both Drew Brees and Tom Brady have surpassed Manning’s 539 career touchdown mark by now, but back in 2014 this was a fun day.