Joe Burrow and Josh Allen face off for first time as Cincinnati Bengals take on Buffalo Bills in MNF blockbuster

Monday Night Football may have never looked so good. Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, AFC warfare, playoff implications, Super Bowl aspirations and two of the NFL's most dangerous teams locking horns as a postseason appetiser in the penultimate week of the regular season.

"At the end of the day, what people got to realise and understand, we the big dog of the AFC and that's just what it is," Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon sought to remind people after practice earlier in the week. "For anything to happen, it goes through us."

Message received and understood, the Buffalo Bills might be inclined to say.

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The Bengals, for all the early-season doubts and overreactions cast upon them, are marching towards the playoffs as they look to run it back following February's Super Bowl defeat to the Los Angeles Rams. So yes, the AFC arguably runs through them for now, but on Monday they meet a 12-3 Bills team closing in on the No 1 seed in the conference as heavily-backed favourites to go all the way.

Cincinnati could yet snatch the No 1 occupancy from Buffalo or the Kansas City Chiefs, but know they must extend their seven-game winning streak tonight in order to have any chance of clinching that first-round bye.

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The sub-plot is a tasty first career meeting between Burrow and Allen as two members of the NFL's quintessential modern quarterbacks club, teeing up a potentially three-pronged era-defining rivalry alongside Patrick Mahomes as the faces of everything passer-needy teams could wish for in their next man under center.

Both have redefined toughness with their own respective personalisation of the concept, between Burrow's 'get hit, get back up' resilience to Allen's cinematic robustness. They match it with exceptional arm talent, off-script invention, pocket command and two of the most glaring cases of natural leadership evident in the league.

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"We’re friends. We’ve hung out quite a bit," said Burrow. "Everybody that watches Josh, there’s no secrets about why he’s so good. He’s fun to watch, he runs around. He makes plays. He makes throws that nobody else can make. He’s just an exciting player, a great player that it’s going to be fun to go up against him."

Where Burrow rallied from college irrelevance to produce heroics with LSU and reinvigorate an entire franchise, Allen made one of the most drastic leaps from erratic rookie to long-term MVP seen in recent memory

"It's been super impressive to watch and to see his whole story, too," said Allen. "Going to Ohio State, transferring out, spending two years at LSU and arguably having one of the greatest seasons ever in college history. He's got a heckuva story."

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Burrow (4,260 yards, 34 touchdowns) and Allen (4,029 yards, 32 touchdowns) are both ranked in the top six for passing yards and touchdowns in 2022, while both sit top three in offensive yards and touchdowns on the year. They are also fifth and sixth, respectively, in EPA/play (measuring play-by-play efficiency) as pilots to a Bengals offense ranked fifth in DVOA and a Bills offense ranked third in DVOA.

They are beating the blitz while rubbing salt in the wound by thwarting the deep zone shells that pay tribute to their arm talent. Monday's matchup may prove more one of Burrow vs Leslie Frazier and Allen vs Lou Anarumo than one of Burrow vs Allen.

Within the Burrow vs Allen front-page clash comes Hakeem Adeniji filling in at right tackle for the injured La'el Collins against Gregory Rousseau, Logan Wilson blunting the outer-pocket mobility of Allen, a potential Tre'Davious White vs Ja'Marr Chase situation, a seventh-ranked Bengals rushing defense against a seventh-ranked rushing attack, and a second-ranked Bills scoring defense - that has seen that average points allowed creep up over the last six weeks - against a Bengals offense that ranks first in EPA/play and success rate across their seven-game winning run since Week Nine.

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Joe Mixon leads the Bengals with 1,187 yards and eight touchdowns from scrimmage, but is without an end zone visit since Week Nine's five-touchdown game against the Carolina Panthers. The Bills flexed their own flourishing ground game in Week 16 when Devin Singletary (106) & James Cook (99) recorded season highs.

Through the air Tee Higgins spearheads Cincinnati with 1,022 yards and seven scores followed by Ja'Marr Chase's 960 yards and eight touchdowns in four games fewer, while Stefon Diggs tops the Bills with 1,325 yards for 10 touchdowns despite managing just 10 catches for 123 yards and zero scores in his last three outings.

And if you needed any more persuading to tune in on Monday night... the Bengals and Bills' combined 23 wins are tied for most in league history coming into a Monday Night Football game - tied with a Week 16 meeting between the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers in the 1997 season, the very same year the Broncos won the Super Bowl.

Could we be seeing the next Super Bowl champions in action on Monday night? Quite possibly. It's just impossible to predict precisely which of these two red-hot teams and dazzling QBs will find themselves drowning in confetti come mid February.

Watch Buffalo Bills (12-3) @ Cincinnati Bengals (11-4) on Monday Night Football, live on Sky Sports NFL from 1.30am in the early hours of Tuesday morning