With Week 16 nearly in the books, we've entered that late portion of the NFL season where the collective pigskin psyche shifts - teams and fan bases out of the playoffs begin making off-season plans, organizations headed for the postseason hike up their jock straps and steel themselves for another foray and those still not assured a future one way or the other, hold their breath and grip the ball ever tighter.
And somewhere in the cracked, leaky basement of an abandoned newspaper building, 50 members of the Associated Press prepare to sit down and vote for the league's annual MVP award.
This season especially, the award seems to be up for grabs - parity, parity, parity - but could Russell Wilson, quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, be the perfect candidate to win?
"Wilson deserves consideration not just for what he has done all year long, but for what he did on Sunday night, in a game with enormous stakes," writes Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com. "...In a rousing Seahawks victory, Wilson led the Seattle offense to a franchise record 596 total yards, accounting for 427 of them himself (339 passing, 88 rushing). Wilson had a 55-yard run and an 80-yard touchdown pass in the same game. He engineered an offense that put 35 points on one of the best defenses in the NFL."
Wilson and the Seahawks defeated the Arizona Cardinals 35-6, meaning that if they win next week at home against the lowly St. Louis Rams, they'll win the division and possibly receive home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.
Wilson now has 3,236 yards passing and 842 yards rushing on the season. He also has 26 total touchdowns and only six turnovers.
"In the past five weeks this orchestra leader has led 16- and 29-point victories over the first-place team in the division," writes Peter Kind of SportsIllustrated.com, who has Wilson ranked fourth in his current MVP list. "Sunday night in the desert, in the Cards' cacophonous home stadium, he totaled 427 rushing/passing yards with one of the best performances of his three-year career: 20 of 31 for 339 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions, and six rushes for 88 yards. He's got such a great feel for the game-when to stretch a play out, when to give up on it, how to make defenders miss, how to never take the huge hit. He'll cost the Seahawks a fortune after the season when it's time for him to get his second pro contract, but he'll be worth it. All of it."
As King notes, Wilson is 39-13 since entering the NFL. Tom Brady is 38-13 in the same span. Peyton Manning? 39-11.
There are a number of deserving players who will garner MVP votes this season - Aaron Rodgers, Tony Romo, Tom Brady and even the closest thing to a super-human currently playing in the NFL, J.J. Watt.
But has anyone been more integral to their team's success than Wilson? With his late-season resurgence and strong leadership, he may be far and away the best candidate to win the award.
