A big game for the New England Patriots will take place in Week 15 of the NFL season, one of the biggest in half a decade. The good news is the game is at home, and the Patriots have a favorite for the NFL's MVP award, Drake Maye at quarterback. The bad news is that they face the current MVP, Josh Allen, and his formidable Buffalo Bills.
"If you wanna be a great player, you gotta sell your soul. You gotta be a flopper. If you wanna be an MVP, you wanna be top of the top, you gotta sell your soul and just be a flopper."- Jaylen Brown pic.twitter.com/Cc6foIuiBZ- Riley ❄️ (@rileysbetter) December 9, 2025
Around Week 8, the MVP race starts to follow a predictable script: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson (if the Ravens are rolling) will almost certainly feature. Between 2015 and 2019, the NFL had four first-time MVP winners Cam Newton, Matt Ryan, Mahomes and Jackson. But in the last five years, only Allen has been a first-time winner (Aaron Rodgers, Mahomes and Jackson were the other victors).
Just as baseball's postseason chase has entered the stretch run, those vying for individual honors are running out of time to make their cases. This is our fourth and final Awards Watch of the regular season, and with that in mind, we've changed up our usual format to narrow the focus of each race to the leading contenders in each category. What races are all but decided? Which ones remain very much up in the air? Let's dig in.
