Josh Allen? Lamar Jackson? Joe Burrow? Saquon Barkley? The NFL MVP race comes to a thrilling conclusion | NFL News

Josh Allen? Lamar Jackson? Saquon Barkley? Joe Burrow? British NFL fans, how do you vote?

The MVP race has taken on the feel of a political campaign (minus the bad spray tans, dancing dads and red baseball caps… most of the time), social media playing on stage to impassioned eulogies for their candidates.

With that comes fascinating insight into how football is perceived among fans, how the quarterback position is perceived, how wins are perceived, and how the MVP award itself is perceived.

As the playoffs approach, various campaign tracks have reached their final stages. But is it a two-horse race? A three-horse race? Or the fatal four-way?

Josh Allen made what will likely be his final argument on Sunday as he threw two touchdowns while rushing for another as the Buffalo Bills torched the New York Jets 40-14 to clinch the No. 2 seed in the AFC, which is now unlikely. perform on the last day of the regular season.

It capped off an incredible December in which Allen threw 18 touchdowns to just one turnover, seeing him become the first player in NFL history to post five consecutive 40-touchdown campaigns in the process.

“At the end of the day, Josh Allen is the MVP,” Bills head coach Sean McDermott said. “I've been in this league long enough to know that I see an MVP every year for many years. And what he's done on this team and in this organization in this community, and no offense to anybody else, but I have a hard time. I believe that somebody has done more .

Allen has yet to win an MVP in his glittering NFL career as he continues to lead Buffalo's quest for a long-awaited Super Bowl. He remains THE Bills' run-and-run offense, with the most mayhem-inducing arm in the league and the code-cheating ability to match up defenders as a quarterback.

With Sunday's performance, Allen should finish the regular season 307-of-483 for 3,731 yards, 28 touchdowns and six interceptions while rushing for 531 yards and 12 scores as the ultimate driver of a youthful offense that, despite the talent and production of James Cook , uses its running back far less than his rivals in the Super Bowl.

“I don't know what else he could do,” Spencer Brown said. “It's consistency, he does it with everybody he gets his hands on. I mean, that's pretty clear to me. And then now people are like, 'Oh, that's Charles Barkley MVP.' I'm like, 'Ah, he's the only the player who did it', I don't vote.

For most, his stiffest competition comes in the form of two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, who just put on yet another out-of-this-world performance of throws and scramble clinics while throwing for two touchdowns and rushing for another to make the Houston Texans look more than usual to win on Christmas Day by a score of 31-2.

Jackson has now thrown for 3,955 yards and 39 touchdowns to just four interceptions with a league-high 77.9 quarterback rating and a high EPA+CPOE composite, as well as rushing for 852 yards and four touchdowns, just breaking Michael Vick's NFL record for most rushing yards by the quarterback.

With help from Derrick Henry, he led an offense that ranked No. 1 in yards, No. 5 in passing, No. 2 in attacking, at no. 3 in scoring and 2nd in EPA/game, making up for the second-worst ranked passing defense. and 14th in EPA/play.

“I think Josh Allen might get the edge just because Lamar had two. If Josh had two, you're going to side with the guy who doesn't have it, that's just human nature,” CBS' Tony Romo said.

“I just think I'd go by record right now. One's two losses down. One's got two seeds. So that guy, if it's this close, a win and a loss gives you, barely, an edge. The problem is, Unfortunately, Lamar won. I'm fine with either.”

Elsewhere in Week 17, Saquon Barkley rushed for 167 yards to help the Philadelphia Eagles win the NFC East division title with a 41-7 victory over the Dallas Cowboys. In doing so, he became the ninth player in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards in a season, while in the final game of the season he needed just 101 yards to break Eric Dickerson's long-standing single-season record of 2,105 yards.

Barkley rushed for a league-high 2,005 yards and 13 touchdowns on 345 carries, with 33 catches for 278 yards and two scores, accounting for 38 percent of the Eagles' total yards from scrimmage in his first season since being traded from the New York Giants.

A running back hasn't been named MVP since Adrian Peterson won the award in 2012, with just 13 running backs earning the honor in the Super Bowl era. So the odds are slim against such dominant quarterback competition, as Christian McCaffrey proved after he fell out of the conversation despite leading the league with 2,023 yards and 21 touchdowns from scrimmage last year.

That Barkley will remain in that conversation heading into the final week, however, is a testament to his impact. If not the MVP, Barkley still has a chance to make history by breaking Dickerson's record against his former team, even if his priorities are postseason success.

“Whatever his decision is, I'm all for it,” Barkley said. “If his mindset is go out and try, we'll go out and try. If his mindset is let's rest and get ready for this run, I'm all for it.

“I'm not trying too hard to get it. I'm not afraid. I'd love to. But at the end of the day, we've got bigger things to focus on.”

And on Saturday, Joe Burrow underscored why he deserves to be in the discussion as he went 39-of-49 for 412 yards and three touchdowns while rushing for a score to help the Cincinnati Bengals keep their season alive with a 30-24 overtime win against Denver Broncos .

Burrow now leads the league in completions (424) and passing yards (4,641) for 42 touchdowns to just eight interceptions, guiding the Bengals on a four-game winning streak that has pulled them from 4-8 to somehow still be in the playoff game in the playoffs before the final weekend.

His heroics salvaged what looked like a lost campaign against a struggling Bengals defense that is sixth-worst in yards allowed, ninth in passing and fourth in points. At his best this season, he was the best in every field.

Take him out of the equation and the Bengals are dead and buried long before December. Should he defy the odds and lead Cincinnati to the playoffs, isn't that the definition of 'most valuable player'?

“I don't know that anybody can stand on the field and look at Joe Burrow and not say he's the best player in the world,” Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said. “I wouldn't trade Joe Burrow for any player in the universe, and for me? That's the MVP for me.”

Allen is the face of the entire Bills operation without a focal point in the form of Derrick Henry or Ja'Marr Chase to wreak havoc with, instead relying on an all-you-can-eat offense by holding weekly auditions for prominent involvement.

Jackson continues to break the boundaries of an NFL quarterback as the greatest two-way threat the league has ever seen, Baltimore's touchdown machine erasing concerns about a pass defense that would have been much more pressing if there was a different face under center.

Burrow is playing the best football of any quarterback in the NFL after pulling the Bengals out of a hole as perhaps Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs' most proven threat and most feared threat.

And Barkley is on the verge of history as he transformed the Eagles' offense to one of the best seasons running the football.

Good luck voters.

Watch every NFL play-off game throughout January, followed by Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on Sunday February 9, live on Sky Sports NFL.