Most Consecutive Starts in NFL History

Brett Favre started 297 consecutive regular-season games in the NFL, from 1992 to 2010, the most in league history at any position. Add the playoffs and the streak stretches to 321 straight starts. But Favre is only the headline of a much deeper list: ten players have strung together at least 215 consecutive starts, spanning quarterbacks, a defensive end, a linebacker, three offensive linemen, a defensive tackle, and a cornerback. Here is the full ranked leaderboard, verified against Pro Football Reference and Wikipedia’s consolidated starts data, plus the streaks still alive as of the 2026 season.

The longest consecutive-starts streaks in NFL history

The table ranks the ten longest consecutive-starts streaks for any position, regular season only. Playoff-inclusive totals push several of these figures higher, most notably Favre’s to 321 and Marshall’s to 289.

Brett Favre: a start every week for nearly 19 years

Favre’s streak began with his first start for Green Bay in 1992 and did not end until a shoulder injury sidelined him against the New York Giants in December 2010. In between he started for three different teams, playing through a broken thumb, a badly sprained ankle, a separated shoulder, and the sudden death of his father the night before a Monday Night Football game he still started and won. That is the part of the record that resists imitation: it is not just talent, it is 18-plus seasons without a single week off at a position that gets hit on nearly every dropback.

Jim Marshall and Bill Romanowski: the iron men before Favre

Before Favre, the record belonged to Jim Marshall, who started 270 straight games as a defensive end for the Minnesota Vikings between 1961 and 1979. His streak is arguably the more punishing of the two, since a defensive lineman collides with blockers on every single snap with no rules shielding him from contact. Bill Romanowski, a linebacker who won four Super Bowls across four different teams, ranks third at 243, a streak built on a reputation for playing through injuries most players would sit out.

The offensive line and secondary entries: Tingelhoff, Rivers, Matthews, Shields, Page, Barber, Fletcher

Four of the top ten are offensive linemen or defensive trench players, a group whose durability rarely gets the attention quarterbacks receive. Mick Tingelhoff started all 240 games of a 17-year career at center for the Vikings without ever missing one. Bruce Matthews, a Hall of Fame guard and tackle, started 229 straight for the Oilers/Titans franchise, and Will Shields matched that toughness at guard for Kansas City with 223. Alan Page, London Fletcher, and Ronde Barber round out the group at 215 each, three Hall of Fame or Hall of Fame-caliber careers built on never leaving the lineup. Philip Rivers, tied with Tingelhoff at 240, is the only quarterback besides Favre inside the top five; he started every regular-season game he played from 2006 through his final season in 2020.

What the record measures, and why it is nearly impossible to sustain

“Consecutive starts” specifically tracks position players officially credited with starting a game, which is a stricter bar than simply appearing in one. A single missed start for any reason, injury, illness, benching, or suspension, resets the count to zero. Modern concussion protocols and load-management decisions also make long streaks harder to build than in Marshall’s or Tingelhoff’s era, since teams are now far more willing to sit a player who once would have stayed in. That is a separate measure from consecutive games played, where special-teams players who face little contact can run longer: punter Jeff Feagles appeared in 352 straight games, more than Favre’s 297 starts, without ever facing the injury risk that comes with blocking or being tackled.

Is anyone chasing the record in 2026?

The closest thing to a modern threat is Falcons left tackle Jake Matthews, who carried the NFL’s longest active starts streak into the 2026 season at roughly 193 consecutive games, still climbing toward his own father Bruce Matthews’ 229. Even a full, healthy 2026 season would leave him well short of Favre’s 297. No current quarterback is within 150 starts of the top spot, and the trend in roster management, resting veterans, load management, earlier benchings for struggling rookies, makes a fresh run at Favre’s number increasingly unlikely. For now, the top of this list looks as safe as any record in football.

For more of the sport’s great durability marks, see the most consecutive games played in MLB, where Cal Ripken Jr.’s streak is the standard, and the most consecutive games played in the NBA for basketball’s version of the feat. For the quarterbacks who turned availability into hardware, our list of the most Super Bowl wins by a quarterback tracks the position’s biggest winners. Want to test how well you know the players behind these records? Try our Guess the NFL Player game.