Matthew Stafford pick-six record

Matthew Stafford pick-six recordStafford 33 pick-sixes NFL recordRams Broncos 30-26 Sunday Night FootballTalanoa Hufanga pick-six 66 yardsMatthew Stafford Brett Favre pick-six recordRams vs Broncos score September 2026Bo Nix game-winning touchdown Broncos Ramsmost pick-sixes in NFL historyMatthew Stafford 390 yards two interceptionsBroncos Rams final score Week 3 2026
Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams — he set the NFL record with his 33rd career pick-six in the Rams' 30-26 loss to the Broncos
Matthew Stafford with the Los Angeles Rams. The 38-year-old quarterback threw his 33rd career pick-six on Sunday night against Denver, breaking Brett Favre's NFL record — in a game the Rams lost 30-26 after leading 16-0 at halftime. Photo: Tennessee Titans via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

DENVER — Matthew Stafford has spent 18 seasons collecting the kind of records that build a Hall of Fame résumé. On Sunday night at Empower Field at Mile High, he collected one he would gladly give back. With 4:49 remaining in the fourth quarter and the Los Angeles Rams clinging to a 19-16 lead, Stafford threw a short pass toward Kyren Williams that Denver safety Talanoa Hufanga read like a book — jumping the route, shedding Stafford's tackle attempt at the Rams' 35-yard line, and racing 66 yards for the touchdown that gave the Broncos a 23-19 lead they would not surrender.

It was the 33rd pick-six of Stafford's career, snapping his tie with Brett Favre for the most in NFL history. Dan Marino sits third with 29. And it arrived at the worst possible moment: the Rams had just stopped Denver's second-half avalanche and reclaimed the lead on Harrison Mevis' 48-yard field goal, and the offense was driving for the insurance score that would have buried the Broncos. Instead, six points the wrong way — the exact swing that decided a 30-26 final.

What followed was pure Sunday night theater. Stafford, to his credit, shook off the record-setting mistake immediately, hitting Konata Mumpfield for a 48-yard touchdown on the very next series to retake the lead 26-23 with 3:38 to play. But the Broncos answered with a grinding drive of their own — aided by a controversial defensive pass interference flag that wiped out what looked like a game-sealing interception by Josh Wallace — and Bo Nix lunged over the pile for a 1-yard touchdown with 47 seconds left. The Rams drove to the Denver 14 in the final seconds, but Stafford's last throw, intended for Davante Adams, was intercepted by Hufanga in the end zone as time expired. Two interceptions for Hufanga. One record for Stafford. One brutal loss for the Rams.

The play that made history

Rewind the tape to third-and-6 from the Denver 38, late in the fourth quarter. The Rams lead 19-16. The Broncos are in zone coverage, and Hufanga — lined up to take the flat where Williams is leaking out — diagnoses the play before Stafford even finishes his drop. He steps in front of Williams, and suddenly the 38-year-old reigning NFL MVP is the only thing between a safety and the end zone. Stafford tries to make the tackle at his own 35. Hufanga runs through the attempt and is gone.

The anatomy of the play matters because it was not a fluke deflection or a tipped ball. It was a defender beating a quarterback cleanly — reading eyes, breaking on the route, finishing the return. Hufanga's night, in full: the 66-yard pick-six, a second interception in the end zone to end the game, five tackles and a sack, per the night's takeaways. For a Broncos defense that had been shredded for 16 first-half points, one player essentially won the second half by himself.

And the cruelest detail: the record-breaker was not even the throw that lost the game. Stafford's immediate response — the 48-yard strike to Mumpfield — showed exactly why the Rams trust him. The loss was a team failure: a defense that surrendered 30 second-half points after pitching a first-half shutout, and a pair of flags on the final Denver drive that will be debated all week. But history does not grade on a curve. The box score will forever read: Stafford, 33rd career pick-six, NFL record.

Why this matters: the record nobody wants

A pick-six record is the strangest kind of milestone, because it measures two things at once — and only one of them is bad. To throw 33 interceptions returned for touchdowns, a quarterback must first survive long enough, throw often enough, and play aggressively enough to give defenders 33 chances. The all-time list is not a rogues' gallery of busts. It is Brett Favre, Dan Marino, and now Matthew Stafford: a combined five MVP awards, four Super Bowl appearances, and three of the most prolific arms the league has ever seen.

That is the paradox at the heart of this record. The quarterbacks who throw the most pick-sixes are almost always the quarterbacks who throw the most, period — gunslingers who attack downfield, who trust their arms in tight windows, who play 18 seasons instead of flaming out in six. Stafford's 390 yards on Sunday night, his 30 completions, his immediate bounce-back touchdown: the same aggression that produced the record produced the performance that nearly won the game anyway.

But there is a second, harsher reading, and it is the one that will follow Stafford this week. He is 38, the reigning MVP, the centerpiece of a Rams team built to win now — a team that added All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie and brought back Aaron Donald while Myles Garrett rehabs. Championship windows at this age are measured in months, not years. A record like this one does not change what Stafford is, but it changes the conversation around him: every future interception returned for a touchdown will now be framed as an extension of the record, a growing number next to his name in every broadcast graphic. Favre lived with it. Marino lived with it. Now Stafford will too.

Matthew Stafford in action — the veteran quarterback broke Brett Favre's record for the most pick-sixes in NFL history on Sunday night
Matthew Stafford earlier in his career. Sunday night's 33rd career pick-six broke the tie with Brett Favre (32) for the most in NFL history, with Dan Marino third at 29. Photo: A Healthier Michigan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The numbers behind the night

Put the evening's arithmetic in context and the scale of both the collapse and the record sharpens. The Rams led 16-0 at halftime and were outscored 30-10 after the break — one of the most dramatic second-half reversals of the young season. Denver's comeback required two touchdowns and two two-point conversions just to level the score at 16-16 late in the third quarter, and then 14 fourth-quarter points to finish the job.

Stafford's final line — 30-of-55 for 390 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions — is the statistical portrait of the paradox: enormous production married to catastrophic timing. His two scoring throws went to Tyler Higbee (the game's first touchdown, part of an 8-catch, 62-yard night) and Mumpfield (4 catches, 93 yards). Davante Adams torched the Broncos for 7 catches and 137 yards, including the 49-yard strike that set up the fateful third-and-6. Williams piled up 158 yards from scrimmage. The Rams moved the ball at will between the twenties all night — and lost.

On the other sideline, Bo Nix authored the kind of night that builds a young quarterback's legend: 17-of-34 for 186 yards, touchdown throws to Pat Bryant and Nate Adkins, one interception — and the 1-yard dive with 47 seconds left that won it. Denver's win was its second straight, lifting the Broncos to 2-1, and their tenth consecutive victory over NFC opponents. For the Rams, the eight-game winning streak against AFC teams is over, and at 1-2 they are already chasing in the NFC West.

Then there is the historical ledger. Thirty-three career pick-sixes across 18 seasons works out to fewer than two per year — a rate that underscores how much of this record is about longevity. Favre needed 20 seasons to set the old mark at 32; Stafford needed 18 to break it. The company is instructive: every name near the top of this list is a quarterback who played forever and threw fearlessly. It is a record of endurance wearing a costume of failure.

Winners and losers beyond the box score

Talanoa Hufanga, winner. Two interceptions, a 66-yard touchdown, a game-sealing pick in the end zone, five tackles and a sack. The Broncos safety did not just make the play of the game — he made the play of the young season, and he will give Stafford nightmares. Denver signed him to change games exactly like this one.

Bo Nix, winner. The box score (186 yards) undersells the performance. Nix led scoring drives when the season was slipping away, converted the comeback, and scored the winner himself with 47 seconds left. Pat Bryant — a touchdown catch, a two-point conversion grab, and a 39-yard catch-and-run on the winning drive — announced himself as a fourth-quarter weapon.

The Rams defense, loser. A first-half shutout followed by a 30-point second-half avalanche is a coaching-room nightmare. The unit is already shorthanded — Garrett out for several weeks, Donald still finding his footing, cornerback Jaylen Watson leaving with a shoulder injury in the second half — and Sunday exposed how thin the margin is. Outscored 30-10 after halftime, with the season's goals still intact but suddenly fragile.

The officials' flag, the week's debate. Josh Wallace's apparent game-sealing interception was wiped out by a defensive pass interference call that NBC analyst Terry McAuley questioned on the air, noting it looked like Bryant pulled Wallace down rather than the reverse. An illegal-hands-to-the-face penalty then gave Denver first-and-goal at the 2. The Rams will not blame the officials publicly — McVay rarely does — but that sequence turned a probable win into a loss, and it will be officiated in slow motion on every studio show this week.

Matthew Stafford, complicated. The record is now his, permanently, and it will grow with every future pick-six. But the same night showed why the Rams bet their present on him: 390 yards, two touchdowns, and a 48-yard answer delivered seconds after the worst moment of his season. Legacies are not rewritten in one night. They are annotated — and Sunday night added a complicated footnote to a brilliant one.

What happens next

The schedule offers no mercy for reflection. The Rams fall to 1-2 and next face the Philadelphia Eagles — a team built to punish exactly the kind of second-half defensive fade Los Angeles just displayed. The questions are immediate and uncomfortable: can a banged-up secondary hold up, with Watson's shoulder a fresh concern and Nacua (hip, groin) missing his second straight game on the other side of the ball? Can McVay fix a defense that has now been outscored 30-10 in a half? And can Stafford, at 38, keep carrying an offense that needs him to be perfect because the defense cannot be trusted?

Denver, at 2-1 with two straight wins, heads on the road to face the San Francisco 49ers in Week 4 with genuine momentum — and a defense that now knows it can win a game by itself. The Broncos' tenth straight win over NFC opposition is no accident; this is a team that matches up physically with anyone. If Hufanga plays like this weekly, Denver's ceiling is much higher than a 2-1 record suggests.

And the record? It will follow Stafford the way it followed Favre and Marino — a trivia answer that doubles as a backhanded tribute to longevity. Thirty-four is now the number to watch, then thirty-five, each one extending a mark that says as much about 18 seasons of fearless football as it does about one bad throw on a Sunday night in Denver. The next pick-six Stafford throws will not be a surprise. It will be history, again.

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