NFL Winners and Losers: Drake Maye stays in the NFL MVP conversation and Patriots win AFC East title
- - NFL Winners and Losers: Drake Maye stays in the NFL MVP conversation and Patriots win AFC East title
Frank Schwab December 29, 2025 at 1:35 AM
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Maybe Matthew Stafford will win NFL MVP. He seems to be the sentimental choice, on top of his statistics that are certainly deserving for the award.
Whether or not Drake Maye wins MVP doesn’t matter to the New England Patriots. They’re set up at quarterback for a long time. And they might even be good enough to make it to the Super Bowl this season.
Maye was phenomenal again Sunday in a 42-10 win over the New York Jets. That win, combined with the Buffalo Bills’ loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, clinched the AFC East title for the Patriots. It is the Patriots’ first division title since 2019, which was Tom Brady’s last season in New England.
Maye completed 19-of-21 passes for 256 yards and five touchdowns for a near-perfect 157 passer rating. Maye is the first quarterback since 1981 with five touchdowns and a completion percentage better than 90%, according to CBS’ broadcast. Maye put up those numbers despite sitting out the final 20:31 of the game because it was a blowout. Had head coach Mike Vrabel wanted to run up the score, Maye could have challenged the single-game record of seven touchdowns. It’s not like the Jets were going to stop him.
The Jets are barely a professional team this season, but it was still impressive to see Maye carve them up like he did. Last week he threw for a career-best 380 yards in a comeback win over the Ravens. In Week 17 he set a career high for touchdown passes in a game. He had never thrown for more than three in a game before Sunday.
The MVP debate will be interesting. The one thing in Maye’s favor is the Patriots kept themselves in position to win the AFC East with Sunday’s win. A quarterback from a wild-card team hasn’t won MVP since Peyton Manning in 2008. Stafford seems to have the MVP lead, but team success carries a lot of weight with some voters. The Patriots still have a shot at the No. 1 seed as well, which would help Maye’s case.
[Get more Patriots news: New England team feed]
Theoretically Maye will have more opportunities to win MVP. This is a massive second-year breakout. The Patriots were in the quarterback abyss after Tom Brady’s retirement, but that lasted only a few years before they found their next star. Maye has had a great season and he continues to improve as it goes along. That’s a great sign for the future, and perhaps this postseason as well.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 17 of the NFL season:
Vic Fangio: Last season the Philadelphia Eagles’ defense, along with Saquon Barkley, were the key strengths to a Super Bowl team.
If the Eagles have any chance of making another Super Bowl, it’s because of their defense, which has become one of the NFL’s best again in the second half of this season under Fangio’s leadership.
Philadelphia’s offense did practically nothing in the second half, but its defense held on for a 13-12 win. Josh Allen scored on a quarterback sneak with five seconds left, but when the Bills went for the 2-point conversion and the lead Allen missed an open Khalil Shakir in the end zone. The Eagles did a good job bottling up Allen for most of the game. Philadelphia shut out Buffalo in the first half, which was useful when its offense disappeared after halftime.
The Eagles had just 16 yards in the second half. Philadelphia has a major problem on offense that seems unlikely to be fixed. But defense will keep the Eagles in games, if the offense decides to join the party in the offseason.
Joe Burrow: All it takes is some wins for negative narratives to fade away.
Burrow was unhappy a couple weeks ago and expressed that. Every comment he made was taken to mean he wanted to leave the Cincinnati Bengals, even when he said otherwise, which was unfair to Burrow, the franchise and Bengals fans too. Burrow’s state of mind will come up again in the offseason, but for now it’s on the back burner.
He followed up a solid Week 16 game and a win with another productive performance in a 37-14 Bengals win over the Arizona Cardinals. Burrow had two touchdown passes to Ja’Marr Chase in the first half, and that was enough against a depleted Cardinals team that has one win since Week 2. Burrow had 305 yards and those two scores when he was pulled with less than 12 minutes remaining in the blowout win.
We haven’t heard the last about Burrow’s discontent. But it’s less of a hot topic when the Bengals win.
Cam Ward and Tyler Shough: It’s hard to judge Ward’s rookie season. There have been great highlights, but not much sustainable success. The Titans’ offense has been miserable, but how much of that is a miserable situation around him, including an interim coaching staff for much of the year?
The positive is that Ward is playing better late in the season. He had more of his highlight throws even though the Titans lost 34-26 to the New Orleans Saints. Ward had 251 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions in the loss.
The Saints have their own rookie success story. Second-round draft pick Tyler Shough has played very well in the second half of the season, and had 333 yards and two touchdowns Sunday. He has earned the right to be the team’s starter to begin the 2026 season. He still has a shot to take NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Ward has shown promise too. The Titans’ record is still an awful 3-13, but they have played much better in the second half of the season, including Ward. There’s a lot of work to do in Tennessee but the Titans should feel good about the way their rookie quarterback is finishing the season.
DK Metcalf: Metcalf’s fit of anger over a fan in Detroit could cost the Pittsburgh Steelers a playoff spot.
The Steelers needed to beat the Cleveland Browns on Sunday to clinch the AFC North after the Baltimore Ravens won Saturday night to stay alive. But the Steelers’ offense sputtered without Metcalf, their best receiver who was suspended two games for going to the stands and taking a swing at a fan who was taunting him. The Steelers lost 13-6 to a Browns team that did a fine job playing spoiler.
Pittsburgh’s Week 18 game against the Ravens will be for the division title. And Metcalf will miss that one, too.
The Steelers had a chance at the end when they got to the 7-yard line in the final seconds trailing by a touchdown. Aaron Rodgers threw incomplete four straight times and the Browns had the upset win. Metcalf might have been the difference in that goal-to-go situation. But he was at home watching, as he will when the Steelers try to make the playoffs next week.
New York Giants fans: The reaction on social media from Giants fans over the team’s win Sunday seemed to be almost unanimous. They’d have much rather seen a loss.
The Giants couldn’t help but beat a Las Vegas Raiders team that is completely inept and also was putting star players on IR to ensure they wouldn’t play in Sunday’s game that had major draft implications. The Giants would have clinched the first pick of the 2026 NFL Draft with a loss, but they won easily, blowing out the Raiders.
You can’t tell coaches and players to not try, and the Giants were clearly the better team, which says way more about the Raiders’ situation than anything good about the Giants. New York will still have a top-seven pick in next year’s draft. Giants fans wanted the top pick as a consolation for a miserable season, but the Raiders will clinch that if they lose next week against the visiting Chiefs.
Bryce Young is feeling the pain of not being able to clinch a playoff berth on Sunday against the Seahawks. (Photo by David Jensen/Getty Images) (David Jensen via Getty Images)
NFC South: Nobody wants to win the NFC South. Certainly, nobody wants to see that division’s champion in the playoffs.
The NFC South is sputtering to a sad but dramatic finish. The division will come down to Week 18. On Sunday the Tampa Bay Buccaneers suffered their seventh loss in eight games, this time a 20-17 defeat to a Dolphins team that is being quarterbacked by Quinn Ewers. That opened up the possibility of the Carolina Panthers clinching the division with a win, but they fumbled that away against the Seattle Seahawks, who went on the road and won 27-10 to maintain their lead in the NFC West and for the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
Carolina’s loss means the Panthers-Buccaneers game in Week 18 will likely be for the division championship. There is a scenario in which the Falcons win their final two games (they play the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night), the Buccaneers win in Week 18 and the Panthers take the division title because they have the three-way tiebreaker with Tampa Bay, Carolina and Atlanta all finishing 8-9. The Buccaneers win a two-team tiebreaker with the Panthers.
Either way, no team from the NFC South deserves to make the playoffs. At least the Seahawks are a quality team and the Panthers losing to them isn’t embarrassing. The Buccaneers are losing to everyone lately. There was a report from NFL Media that entirely dismissed the idea that Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles is on the hot seat, but that makes no sense if you’ve seen Tampa Bay play lately. It’s an awful team.
The Panthers aren’t great either, but someone has to win the division. It will be an 8-9 team if Tampa Bay wins next week. Can that team save our time and opt out of the postseason?
Houston Texans: For a while Sunday, it looked like the Texans might control their path to an AFC South title.
The Indianapolis Colts played hard and well against the Jacksonville Jaguars and led 17-14 late in the third quarter. The Texans, who won Saturday, need the Jaguars to lose one of their final two games to win the division. But the Jaguars stayed calm and got three field goals down the stretch to beat the Colts 23-17. That could be the last start of Philip Rivers’ career; there were reports that Riley Leonard will start Week 18. The Colts were eliminated from playoff contention Saturday with the Texans’ win.
The Texans now need to hope the Titans can pull off an upset of the Jaguars in Week 18. Jacksonville will win the division with a win over Tennessee or a Texans loss to the Colts. They almost got the result they needed in Indianapolis on Sunday.
Source: “AOL Sports”
