Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson are in each other's way, whether they downplay it or not

OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Tre’Davious White has plans Sunday night. He’ll be playing cornerback for the Baltimore Ravens, who are trying to get one step closer to the Super Bowl. He’ll be in frigid Western New York to face a Buffalo Bills team that White was part of for the first seven years of his career.

For an accomplished veteran like White, who has gotten close but never had the opportunity to play on the sport’s biggest stage, there’s no place he’d rather be. He also willingly acknowledges that the alternative — watching Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen lead their respective teams in one of the most anticipated divisional-round playoff games in recent memory — wouldn’t have been so bad either.

“I’d be tuned in with my popcorn, my Fruit Gushers and my Ginger Ale. That’s for sure,” White said from Baltimore’s locker room Wednesday. “But now that I’m playing, I’m more honed in on what I can do to try and help Lamar and the Ravens come out on top.”

Jackson and Allen have seemingly been on a collision course for months as the NFL’s two leading MVP candidates. Their credentials for the award have been dissected and debated on TV and in the media with talking heads looking for differentiators on season resumes without blemishes. The dialogue has been a daily source of conflict between the Ravens’ and Bills’ fan bases.

Yet, the MVP award won’t be decided Sunday night at Highmark Stadium, even if some will use the result as a referendum on why their preferred candidate should win. It’s a regular-season award. The votes have already been cast and the winner will be revealed Feb. 6 at the NFL Honors show days before Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans.

The ramifications of the game, however, figure to be immense both for the two quarterbacks and the franchises they represent.

“Both of them, for their legacy, have to win a Super Bowl,” said ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky, a former NFL quarterback. “It would elevate them into a different group than they are in right now. I think that’s an accurate depiction of it.”

Jackson, who turned 28 this month, already has two MVPs and three first-team All-Pro selections. What he hasn’t done is lead the Ravens to the NFL mountaintop and knock off an elite veteran quarterback amid a postseason run. Jackson is the lone two-time MVP not to win a Super Bowl, although he should get plenty of opportunities to rectify that. The Ravens have been to the playoffs in six of Jackson’s seven years as a starter, but they’ve advanced past the divisional round just once — and that postseason run ended last January, when they were beaten at home by the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC title game.

The Bills and Allen know the feeling. The 28-year-old quarterback is a three-time Pro Bowler who is having the best year of his career after an offseason where the Bills traded star wide receiver Stefon Diggs, leaving many pundits to predict a Buffalo regression. Instead, the Bills, riding the arm and legs of Allen, won 13 games, beat the top seed in both the AFC (Chiefs) and NFC (Detroit Lions), and then dominated the upstart Denver Broncos in their playoff opener.

Allen has put up strong postseason numbers in the Bills’ six consecutive trips to the playoffs, but it hasn’t translated to extended January success. The Bills have lost in the divisional round in three straight years and have been to the conference championship just once since 1993, losing to the Chiefs following the 2020 regular season.

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Sunday night’s winner could get another shot at the Chiefs, who play the Houston Texans in the other divisional-round game. The loser will face the same old questions about their inability to get over the hump in January.

In the NFL, the “can’t win the big one” criticism tends to collect on the shoulders of the quarterback. For Jackson and Allen, the presumed first- and second-place finishers for MVP, that talk will only get louder if their tour de force regular seasons is followed by early postseason elimination.

“That’s how people, certainly the media, kind of perceive these guys,” Orlovsky said. “I don’t, I hate it. But I’m also aware, that’s the ultimate goal, right? It’s the ultimate position that leads the ultimate team game.

“The ability to win championships, because of the role, because of the financial commitment, that’s just one of those things that gets attached to it. I don’t think that not winning one diminishes the player’s impressive accomplishments, but I do think it’s OK for us to be very aware that these guys play this game to win a title. These greats don’t play just because they get a ton of money. They play to win a title. I just don’t like when we negatively have the conversation about them if they don’t get it done.”

Jackson and Allen kept the game’s most prominent storyline at arm’s length this week.

“In the history of football, I’ve never really played against another quarterback,” Allen said. “I’ve played against their defense.”

Dismissing the pregame hype, Jackson said he felt no different than he did last week when the Ravens were preparing for a home wild-card matchup as 9 1/2-point favorites against the division-rival Pittsburgh Steelers.

“Excuse me for everybody watching, but I really don’t care who’s watching,” Jackson said. “We really don’t care how people feel about it. We’re trying to go in there and just win. That’s a tough environment, a tough team — offense, defense and special teams. We’re just trying to go there and win.”

Jackson and Allen have expressed mutual respect, but they don’t have any relationship to speak of. Jackson doesn’t believe in fraternizing with quarterbacks from opposing teams.

“I don’t really chill with people in the offseason, especially not other quarterbacks,” he said this week. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s no problem or nothing like that, but we’re competing with each other. I’m trying to beat you, I’m not trying to be your friend.”

Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have had career years, but nothing is more important than winning in Sunday’s AFC divisional round. (Greg Fiume / Getty Images)

Make no mistake, Jackson and Allen will always be linked as members of the NFL’s 2018 first-round quarterback class, which also yielded Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen. Jackson and Allen were polarizing prospects in a lot of ways. Yet, both played extensively as rookies and have added to their games just about every year since.

They’ve never been better than this season. Jackson became the first player in NFL history to throw for over 4,000 yards and run for over 900. He totaled 45 touchdowns, threw just four interceptions and led all quarterbacks in passer rating.

Allen accounted for 4,269 total yards and 41 touchdowns. A year after throwing 18 interceptions, Allen was picked off just six times while spreading the ball around to an unheralded group of pass catchers.

“Me and some of the guys were talking about quarterbacks we hate playing the most, based off of who would be closest to Lamar and how (Allen’s) able to keep a play going,” Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. “The play is really never over, and then, when he runs, he is a big dude. He can juke you, but he can run you over and keep running very easily. Just a super tough quarterback to go against.”

Jackson and Allen have become the most prominent examples of the dual-threat quarterbacks, which are all the rage in the NFL. Patrick Mahomes, who has led the Chiefs to four Super Bowls in the previous five seasons and won three of them, is widely considered the gold standard at the position. With two regular-season MVPs and three Super Bowl MVPs, he is who Jackson and Allen, along with Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow, are chasing.

But potentially earning another shot at Mahomes or at least accomplishing something he’s already done three times starts with finding a way to win on Sunday.

“I don’t think either of these guys sits there and goes, ‘Well, I can only win the MVP and not the Super Bowl,’ or ‘I can only win the Super Bowl and not the MVP.’ One of the reasons they are who they are and they are so great is because they (have a) want their cake and eat it too type of mindset,” Orlovsky said. “I think they both believe they can accomplish both of those things, but make no mistake, they both 100 percent want the championship at an exponentially higher rate than they want the MVP. If they had to pick, there wouldn’t even be a hesitation.”

The story has been told before. Jackson’s insatiable desire to win a championship was fueled by some of his earliest football memories while growing up in South Florida. Jackson led the Northwest Broward Raiders to a South Florida Youth Football League Super Bowl victory. The experience stuck with him, and he yearns to recapture that feeling and the camaraderie that comes with celebrating a championship with teammates.

Jackson vowed on the night he was drafted that the Ravens were going to get a Super Bowl out of him. After several years of playoff disappointment, he remains more resolute than ever.

“I’ve never heard Lamar talk about a single stat since I’ve been here. I’ve only heard him talk about a win or loss,” said Ravens fourth-year wide receiver Rashod Bateman. “I’m not joking. As a receiver, we’re going to go to each other and be like, ‘Bro, I just went for a 100 (yards).’ Lamar has never went to a player and said, ‘I just threw for this many yards. I just won MVP.’ It’s just not him. It’s not ever been him. He’s made it clear to us what his agenda is.”

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The Ravens have been using the expression “locked in” to describe their playoff mentality this year. It’s just the latest example of the team following the quarterback’s lead.

“He never cares about personal agendas, personal stats,” said Baltimore tight end Isaiah Likely. “He’s only focused on the win column. I feel like that’s exactly what you need from a quarterback this time of year. At this point, nothing else matters but the W.”

White was a teammate of Allen’s in Buffalo from 2018 to 2023. A pre-trade deadline addition by the Ravens, White has only been around Jackson for a few months. However, he sees clear similarities with the approach and competitiveness of the two quarterbacks.

“Josh has had plenty of years where he’s had great years and he felt like he deserved (the accolades) but didn’t get them,” White said. “But that was something that was never brought up. His attitude didn’t change. The ultimate goal was winning the Super Bowl. It’s always been team success over individual success, for sure. As the quarterback of your team, you want guys like that with that type of attitude. If the quarterback cares, it galvanizes everybody around him.”

Ravens wide receiver/return specialist Deonte Harty was a member of the Bills last year. He immediately smiled and chuckled Thursday when he was asked how much Jackson and Allen have in common.

“Both of them have the same focus, which is getting a championship,” Harty said. “The personal stuff is whatever to them. I’m sure they take pride in it, but both of them, their main goal is winning the Super Bowl. Watching both of them go to work every day, not worry about the outside news or whatever everybody is talking about — MVP this, MVP that — both of them just lock in on the main goal.”

On Sunday, they’ll be in each other’s way. There has been plenty of talk this week about who needs the game more to augment their growing body of work. Jackson is 3-4 as a playoff quarterback and hasn’t particularly played well in many of those games. This year, however, feels different. He entered the postseason playing at such a high level, and that level didn’t drop a bit in the wild-card win over the Steelers. Jackson has a worthy sidekick in running back Derrick Henry now, too.

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If you believed much of the summer talk, the Bills weren’t supposed to be in this position. Allen’s regular-season numbers didn’t match Jackson’s in myriad categories, but his MVP candidacy is backed strongly by the belief that no player in 2024 did more to elevate his teammates.

What matters now, particularly for a proud franchise desperate for Super Bowl glory, is whether Allen can continue doing it for at least three games. He understands the stakes. So does Jackson.

“That’s why you play this game,” Allen said, “to be in moments like these.”

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Timothy T Ludwig, Michael Owens / Getty Images)