Can I use the sentence "Most of the references in this paper" in my paper?
I would use the first option. If you know the papers which back your position, name them. Maybe not all of them, but three to five. Choose the papers with the most explicit wording and/or the authors with highest reputation in your field.

Note, some citation styles allow to write the list of cited papers more compact, e.g., [1,2,4-8,..15].