Josh Allen? Lamar Jackson? Joe Burrow? Saquon Barkley? The NFL’s MVP race reaches thrilling conclusion | NFL News

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

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

With it comes a 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, the various campaign trails have reached their final stages. But is it a two-horse race? A three-horse race? Or a fatal four-way?

Josh Allen issued what is likely to be his final argument on Sunday as he threw for 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, the star quarterback now unlikely to feature on the final day of the regular season.

It capped an incredible December across which Allen has accounted for 18 touchdowns to just one turnover, seeing him become the first player in NFL history to post five successive 40-touchdown campaigns in the process.

“At the end of the day, Josh Allen is the MVP,” said Bills head coach Sean McDermott. “I’ve been around this league long enough to know to see MVP every year for many years. And what he has done on this team and this organisation in this community, and no offence to anybody else, but I’ve got a hard time believing that someone’s done more. I really believe that.”

Allen is yet to win MVP in his glittering NFL career as he continues to lead Buffalo’s pursuit of a long-awaited Super Bowl. He remains THE Bills offense, through which an entire team operates and upon which an entire team leans, with the most chaos-inciting arm in the league and a cheat code ability to steamroll defenders like a fullback.

With Sunday’s display Allen is set to 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 elevator of a youthful offense that, despite the talent and production of James Cook, uses its running back far more scarcely than its Super Bowl rivals.

“I don’t know what more else he could do,” said right tackle Spencer Brown. “That’s consistency, he does it with anybody that he gets his hands on. I mean, it’s pretty clear-cut for me. And then now people are saying, ‘Oh, it’s a Charles Barkley MVP’. I’m like, ‘Ah, he’s the only player to ever do that’. It’s not up to me. I don’t vote. But 17 is the MVP for sure.”

For most, his fiercest competition comes in the form of two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, who just delivered another performance of otherworldly throws and scramble clinics while throwing for two touchdowns and rushing for another to make the Houston Texans look more-than-ordinary in a 31-2 Christmas Day victory.

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

With the help of Derrick Henry, he has spearheaded an offense ranked No 1 in yards, No 5 in passing, No 2 in rushing, No 3 in scoring and No 2 in EPA/play, compensating for a defense ranked second worst against the pass and 14th in EPA/play.

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

“I just think right now, I would go by the record. One has two less losses. One got the two seed. So that guy, if it’s this close, winning and losing gives you, barely, the edge. The problem is, head-to-head, Lamar beat him. Now I do think Lamar having a Derrick Henry effects the game. But you can’t take anything away from either of these guys. They both have played their best season of their career. I am fine with either.”

Elsewhere in Week 17 Saquon Barkley rushed for 167 yards to help the Philadelphia Eagles clinch 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 leaving himself needing just 101 yards in the final game of the season to break Eric Dickerson’s long-standing single-season rushing record of 2,105 yards.

Barkley has rushed for a league-high 2,005 yards and 13 touchdowns from 345 carries alongside 33 catches for 278 yards and two scores, accounting for 38 per cent of the Eagles’ total yards from scrimmage in his first season since moving across from the New York Giants.

A running back has not been named MVP since Adrian Peterson scooped the award in 2012, with only 13 running backs earning the accolade in the Super Bowl era. So the chances are slim in the face of competition from such dominant quarterbacks, Christian McCaffrey evidence of as much after falling out of the conversation despite his league-leading 2,023 yards and 21 touchdowns from scrimmage last year.

For Barkley to remain in that conversation heading into the final week, though, is testament to his impact. If not MVP, Barkley still has the chance to create history by breaking Dickerson’s record against his former team, even if his priorities lie with postseason success.

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

“I’m not overly trying to go get it. I’m not scared to. I would love to. But at the end of the day, we’ve got bigger things we’re focusing on.”

And on Saturday Joe Burrow underlined 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 victory against the Denver Broncos.

Burrow now leads the league in completions (424) and passing yards (4,641) for 42 touchdowns to just eight interceptions, steering the Bengals to a four-game winning streak that has pulled them back from 4-8 to somehow still be in with a chance of reaching the playoffs heading into the final weekend.

His heroics have salvaged what had looked a lost campaign across from a slumping Bengals defense that ranks sixth-worst in yards allowed, ninth-worst in passing and fourth-worst in scoring. At his best this season, he has been the best on any and every field.

Remove him from the equation and the Bengals are dead and buried long before December. Should he defy the odds and lead Cincinnati to the playoffs, is that not the definition of a ‘most valuable player’?

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

Allen is the face of the entire Bills operation without a Derrick Henry or a Ja’Marr Chase-shaped focal point with whom to wreak havoc, instead drawing on an ‘everybody eats’ offense staging weekly auditions for prominent involvement.

Jackson continues to shatter the boundaries of NFL quarterbacking as the greatest two-way threat the league has ever seen, Baltimore’s touchdown machine erasing the concerns of a leaky defense that would be far more pressing were there a different face under center.

Burrow is playing the best football of any quarterback in the NFL having hoisted the Bengals out of a pit as perhaps the most proven and most feared threat to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.

And Barkley is on the verge of history having transformed the Eagles offense with one of the greatest seasons by a running back football has witnessed.

Good luck, voters.

Watch every game of the NFL playoffs throughout January followed by Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on Sunday February 9, live on Sky Sports NFL.