NFL Week 12, Sorting the Sunday Pile: Saquon Barkley’s MVP case, Bo Nix surges, Niners in big trouble

It’s been a long time — more than a decade — since a running back won MVP. And, all due respect to Adrian Peterson’s 2012 season, it’s been almost 20 years since a running back won MVP in a year where the running back deserved to win MVP. Almost every season around this time, some skill position player erupts for a big game that thrusts them into the discussion and it appears it’s Saquon Barkley’s turn. 

The Eagles running back, signed this offseason by Philly to a massive deal after being snubbed by the Giants in contract negotiations so they could ink Devin Singletary, went Thanksgiving ham on the Rams defense Sunday night, rumbling for 255 yards on 26 carries, including a pair of breathtaking 70+ yard touchdown runs in the Eagles’ 37-20 blowout win.

Sunday night’s road win left the Eagles undefeated since their Week 5 bye, it put them just a game back of the 10-1 Detroit Lions in pursuit of the No. 1 seed in the NFC and it kickstarted a real discussion about Saquon’s MVP candidacy. 

Over at FanDuel Sportsbook, Barkley is now the third favorite to win the award at +650. At DraftKings Sportsbook, Saquon is even lower, clocking in at an even 5-1 odds to win MVP. From a consensus perspective, Barkley trails only prohibitive favorite Josh Allen as well as reigning MVP Lamar Jackson for the award. 

So let’s address the elephant in the room. 

Does Saquon deserve MVP consideration?

Sure. Absolutely. He’s having an incredible season so far and is clearly the best player on a really good team. The Eagles are 9-2 and have been on an absolute tear since their bye. Barkley leads the NFL in carries (223), rushing yards (1,392), yards per rush (6.2) and rushing yards per game (126.5). He’s been everything he was supposed to be when the Giants drafted him above a bunch of quarterbacks in the 2018 NFL Draft. Shoutout Dave Gettleman, the only GM I can recall who took a running back in the top 10 of two consecutive drafts for two different franchises. (In his defense, Christian McCaffrey and Barkley are both awesome. They’re also both running backs.) 

Barkley is on pace for 345 carries, 2,151 rushing yards and close to 20 total touchdowns when you factor in his receiving prowess. He also has 27 catches for 257 yards and a pair of touchdowns and leads the NFL in yards from scrimmage with 1,649 yards as well. 

For context, in 2012, Adrian Peterson ran for 2,097 yards and led the NFL with 131.1 rush yards per game (only 16 games back then, obviously). He scored 12 touchdowns and dragged a very average Vikings offense to a wild card spot. The voters were in awe of the 2k season and gave him 30.5 votes to Peyton Manning’s 19.5 votes. The voting process now probably hurts Saquon, ironically, but more on that in a second. LaDainian Tomlinson’s 2006 MVP season to beat out Drew Brees — fairly easily — saw LT finish with 2,323 yards from scrimmage and a ridiculous 28 touchdowns, again, in just 16 games. 

Barkley was also an addition to this team, which makes his value easier to quantify in a sense. We saw the Eagles collapse last year in ugly fashion and now they’re THRIVING with Barkley as the primary offseason pickup for this roster. 

Over the last two weeks, Barkley has more total yards than multiple NFL teams have produced. Congrats to the Jets and Jaguars for being worse at offense than Saquon Barkley! But that recent spike in production also leads us to ask …

What is the case against Barkley? 

Barkley was already in the conversation for MVP before his recent two-week explosion. We just weren’t having a serious debate about it. There’s certainly an element of “prisoner of the moment” here — a lot of knee-jerk, reactionary, surface-level analysis will tell you Barkley should be in the mix.

Again, Barkley’s been awesome. I’m not questioning how important he is to the Eagles and how productive he’s been. But he’s also rushing behind an incredible offensive line and has, when healthy, ridiculous talent around him in A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith. When Smith and Brown weren’t on the field against Tampa, Barkley managed just 84 yards on 10 carries. His two other “bad” games came during blowouts of the Cowboys and Giants, in which he headed to the bench early because the Eagles didn’t need him. 

The Eagles produced strong seasons the two years before Saquon arrived, with Miles Sanders running 259 times for 1,269 yards and 11 touchdowns in 2022 and D’Andre Swift rushing 229 times for 1,049 yards and five scores in 2023. Neither of those seasons compare to Barkley, who has already eclipsed those numbers. But it shows how easily the Eagles — with this line, the threat of Jalen Hurts rushing, a heavy dedication to the run (they run on 50+ percent of their plays, highest in the league) and good play-calling from Kellen Moore — can get good production from a running back. They just happen to have one of the best running backs in the league.

Additionally, Saquon’s performance in Week 12 came on Sunday night, with the entire world tuned in to see him. Island games matter in terms of how we perceive certain performances and how we discuss things. Hell, I’m leading this column talking about it. His monster game the week before came on Thursday night in an island game as well. 

Two great games for a surging Super Bowl contender in nationally televised windows with less than a handful of other viable MVP candidates is the perfect mix for short-term thinking and sports-radio yelling about an award that won’t be decided for another nearly two months. 

Even history isn’t kind for Barkley. In 2020, Derrick Henry broke through the 2k mark, finishing with 2,027 rushing yards on 378 carries with 17 rushing touchdowns. He led the league in all three categories. The Titans finished 11-5 and won the AFC South. He received exactly ZERO MVP votes. He won Offensive Player of the Year, but he wasn’t even unanimous, with Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers, Travis Kelce and Alvin Kamara all also receiving votes. We see this across all the awards all the time: quarterbacks get preferential treatment because of the importance of the position. 

Let’s not sleep on the fact the short list of candidates ahead of Barkley are playing great football at that very position. Josh Allen has been sublime this year. He has five picks in his last four games after not throwing one all year before that, but the Bills are on a six-game win streak punctuated by a victory over the Chiefs in Week 11. Allen being on bye this week and Lamar Jackson having not played yet certainly help Saquon. No one else is really in the convo, maybe Justin Herbert and maybe Patrick Mahomes on the one-loss Chiefs. 

Patrick Mahomes has been decidedly not full-blown Patrick Mahomes for a lot of the season, but has been coming on strong lately and the Chiefs are right there for the one seed and should cruise to another AFC West title. 

Replace Barkley with Sanders or Swift and the Eagles are probably somewhere close to the same record. Replace Mahomes, Allen or Lamar with whatever league-average quarterback you want to choose and the three best teams in the AFC are struggling to sniff the wild card. 

Will he actually win MVP? 

I think the Barkley number is reasonable given the way his candidacy will be discussed over the next month. But a lot of the betting number is the sportsbooks protecting themselves from exposure. And I sure wouldn’t bet it. If you gave me $100 on any MVP candidate, I’d just throw it on Allen, who really shouldn’t be plus money given where the Bills are and how he’s played. They’re going to win the division, might get the overall No. 1 seed in the AFC and he’ll win the MVP if that happens. 

Barkley’s legitimacy down the stretch will likely be decided in two games over the next three weeks, when the Eagles play the Ravens (an elite run defense) and the Steelers (an elite defense overall). If Barkley dominates in those games, and carries the Eagles to, at worst, 1-1 against tough AFC defensive competition, he’ll be in the mix and he will almost certainly end up on most ballots. Matchups against the Panthers, Commanders, Cowboys and Giants are looming the rest of the way and those could be big-time explosion spots. 

However, I’d also point out the Eagles defense has been elite since the bye. Three of those four teams might offer next to nothing offensively and even the Commanders, the fourth team, are starting to take Kliff Kingsbury’s traditional late-season offensive swoon. Barkley might not even play a second time against his old team if the Eagles are locked into a division title and a seed going into Week 18. 

Then there’s the voting. Because the 50 MVP voters now get five selections for MVP instead of just a single choice, it’s much, much easier to “reward” a great running back or wide receiver season by giving them a down-ballot vote and then handing them a first-place pick for Offensive Player of the Year. There’s a reason we don’t see anyone other than quarterbacks win the award. 

Barkley is an awesome player, he’s been dominant this season, he will deservedly end up with some hardware at the end of the year. I just don’t think it will be the MVP trophy.

ELSEWHERE AROUND THE LEAGUE

Let’s give some quick-hitting thoughts and questions from the NFL in Week 12. 

• Is Will Levis good? Asking for a tiny, tan friend named Pete Prisco. Because he’s played pretty good football the last two weeks, including Sunday’s shocking victory over the Houston Texans, in which we got an unabridged ride on the Levis-coaster. He threw a couple touchdowns, got sacked eight (!) times, threw a back-breaking pick six and showcased his incredible arm. The Titans offensive line has been bad and while Calvin Ridley is coming on really strong the last few weeks, they’re certainly short on playmakers. Levis is a meme machine and gives us some kind of hilarity almost every single week, but laughing about him on X/Twitter for silly stuff probably bypasses the actual progress he’s made in his game since returning from injury. The Titans might be frisky down the stretch. They’ll at least be entertaining with Levis under center. 
• C.J. Stroud is still good, right? I’M JUST ASKING THE QUESTION. Actually pretend I didn’t. But this is a definite sophomore slump after an incredible rookie season. It happens. 
• Bryce Young isn’t bad??? Speaking of guys who look better after missing time, Young has taken a major step forward since returning to the starting lineup for the Panthers. This Carolina team is a nothing burger in terms of talent around him. He’s throwing to rookies and older vets, but the Panthers nearly put together a third-straight win against the Chiefs at home in a stadium that was completely red. The defense has improved as well, by the way, despite losing players left and right to injury. And when I say “major step” I don’t mean he’s vaulted himself into some different echelon as a quarterback, either. I simply mean he was like a toddler who couldn’t walk and kept falling facefirst into furniture before and now he’s stumbling around the living room with some semblance of balance. Young legit looks calmer out there, isn’t panicking and is making good decisions. The Panthers need to exercise patience here. All is not yet lost, especially if they can get him some help with a high draft pick. It’s encouraging! 
• Are the Lions the best team in football? Yup, they sure are. And now, your weekly Dan Campbell motivational speech:

Give me a Lions-Bills Super Bowl for all the long-suffering marbles.

• Did Baker Mayfield take on the entire Italian community Sunday? He might just have! Baker sprinted into the end zone for a rushing touchdown — one of three Bucs players to score one Sunday — and threw massive shade at Tommy DeVito a.k.a. Tommy Cutlets inside of MetLife Stadium during Tampa’s 30-7 rout of the woeful Giants. 

Tampa is just 5-6 now, but its schedule is about as easy as it gets. Two games remain against the Panthers, they get the Saints an additional time, the Cowboys are on the schedule, plus the Raiders … the Buccaneers could easily go 5-1 down the stretch, even expecting a loss to the Chargers in Week 15. A 4-2 mark seems like something that should happen, which would likely get them into the playoffs. If you don’t enjoy Baker’s vibe out on the field, you probably need to go touch grass. 

These Giants have some problems on their hands, by the way. Malik Nabers was a nonfactor until the game was over Sunday. And he let people know about it after the game. 

If Barkley somehow DOES win MVP — and maybe even if he doesn’t — him being awesome for a divisional rival and the Giants spiraling toward another lost season with a locker room in turmoil might be too much for Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen to overcome in the eyes of ownership. I don’t think it should be, I’m just saying it might be. The fanbase is revolting as well.

• Are the 49ers in trouble? YUP. They sure are. With no Brock Purdy and no Nick Bosa Sunday, they got ramrodded by the Packers 38-10. Christian McCaffrey’s return hasn’t helped as much as most people hoped and at 5-6, they’re not dead in a spicy NFC West, but you’d have to feel better about the Rams than the Niners given the injuries in San Francisco and the schedule remaining. “Hey everyone is hurt and you’re desperate for a win, how does a Bills-Bears-Rams-Dolphins-Lions-Cardinals stretch to close out the season sound? Great? Awesome, here you go.” 
• Is Bo Nix a contender for Offensive Rookie of the Year? Yes he is! He’s the second favorite behind Jayden Daniels at just +125 and is playing awesome football under Sean Payton’s tutelage. A lot of his production has come against lesser teams, but he carved up the Raiders on Sunday, throwing for 273 yards and a pair of touchdowns in the Broncos 29-19 win that pushed them to 7-5. This is a likely playoff team, even if really tough matchups (Bengals, Chargers, Chiefs) in the final three weeks of the season might change the outcome. If they make the playoffs and the Commanders sputter to the finish line offensively, Nix could steal this award from Daniels for sure. Shoutout to Sean Payton, dude is a ridiculously good coach. Here’s hoping the Broncos and Steelers meet on Wild Card Weekend for some serious Revenge Game action.