Eight years ago this Wednesday, one afternoon in Baltimore produced two numbers nobody expected to see on the same box score. On Sunday, October 21, 2018, Drew Brees threw the 500th touchdown pass of his career, and Justin Tucker, who had never missed an extra point in the NFL, missed one. The second number decided the game: the New Orleans Saints beat the Baltimore Ravens 24-23 at M&T Bank Stadium.
Brees finished 22 of 30 for 212 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. The win was the Saints’ fifth in a row and lifted them to 5-1. Baltimore fell to 4-3.
No. 500, and the last team on the list
The milestone arrived with 1:53 left in the second quarter. From the 1-yard line, Brees found tight end Benjamin Watson for a 7-3 lead. That made the 39-year-old the fourth quarterback in league history with 500 touchdown passes, after Peyton Manning, Brett Favre and Tom Brady. Watson handed the ball to Brees as a keepsake.
The victory carried a second piece of history. Brees had lost all four of his previous starts against the Ravens. Beating them made him the third quarterback to win a start against all 32 franchises, joining Manning and Favre.
None of it came easily. New Orleans opened the game with a 20-play drive that ate almost ten minutes and went for it three times on fourth down along the way, and came away empty when Taysom Hill lost a fumble on a fourth-down try four yards from the end zone. Tucker’s 31-yard field goal put the Ravens ahead first, and rookie Lamar Jackson ran in from the 1 with four seconds left in the half for a 10-7 lead at the break.
How the scoring went
| Quarter / clock | Play | Score after |
|---|---|---|
| 2nd, 6:07 | Justin Tucker 31-yard field goal | BAL 3, NO 0 |
| 2nd, 1:53 | Brees 1-yard pass to Benjamin Watson (No. 500) | NO 7, BAL 3 |
| 2nd, 0:04 | Lamar Jackson 1-yard run | BAL 10, NO 7 |
| 3rd, 3:30 | Joe Flacco 8-yard pass to Mark Andrews | BAL 17, NO 7 |
| 4th, 12:32 | Alvin Kamara 2-yard run | BAL 17, NO 14 |
| 4th, 4:58 | Brees 5-yard pass to Michael Thomas | NO 21, BAL 17 |
| 4th, 2:15 | Wil Lutz 39-yard field goal | NO 24, BAL 17 |
| 4th, 0:24 | Flacco 14-yard pass to John Brown; extra point wide right | NO 24, BAL 23 |
Baltimore led 17-7 after Flacco hit Andrews late in the third quarter. The Saints then scored 17 straight points in the fourth: Kamara’s short run, Brees’ 5-yard throw to Thomas with 4:58 to go, and a Lutz field goal that made it a one-score game with 2:15 left.
222 for 222, then one wide right
Flacco answered by driving Baltimore the length of the field and finding Brown from 14 yards out with 24 seconds remaining. The tie looked like a formality. Tucker had made all 222 extra points he had tried since entering the league in 2012, including all 112 since the league moved the kick back to the 15-yard line in 2015.
This one sailed wide right, and the 24 seconds that were left were not enough for Baltimore to get another chance.
Tucker did not hide from it afterward. “At the end of the day I feel like I cost us the game,” he said. Sean Payton, on the winning side, noted his team would study the film and conclude it never should have come down to one kick.
The numbers behind the finish
- Drew Brees: 22 of 30, 212 yards, 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions.
- Joe Flacco: 23 of 39, 279 yards, 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions.
- John Brown: 7 catches, 134 yards, 1 touchdown.
- Michael Thomas: 7 catches, 69 yards, 1 touchdown.
- Alvin Kamara: 17 carries, 64 yards, 1 touchdown.
What came next
The Saints kept winning. Their streak reached ten games, they finished 13-3 and earned the NFC’s top seed. Brees went on to pass Manning for the career touchdown record in December 2019 and retired after the 2020 season with 571. Tucker’s miss stayed a curiosity: he remained one of the most accurate kickers the league has seen, and the afternoon he finally missed a short one is remembered as the day a milestone and a streak ended within the same three hours.
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