Over the next few days I’m going to look at each division in the NFL and give my predictions for them. Since there are 256 NFL games every season, I will be predicting 256 wins and 256 losses for the entire season. First up is the AFC East.
1st place: New England Patriots: 11-5 (AFC #2 seed)
This is an absolute no brainer. Since Tom Brady took over the role as the starting quarterback for the Patriots they’ve one the division every year except for two and one of them was when he tore his ACL in week 1.
I have the Patriots losing games to the Jaguars, Steelers, Vikings, and Packers as well as one of their games against the New York Jets. The game against the Jets is only because the Patriots haven’t gone undefeated in their division since 2012 and I think the Jets have enough talent on their defense to steal a game against them. This should be yet another cake walk of a season in the AFC East for the Patriots.
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2nd place: New York Jets: 6-10
The Jets are an intriguing team to me. If Sam Darnold is as good as I think he can be, I think they can challenge for a wild card in an absolutely miserable AFC. If he has some growing pains, the Jets will be lucky to win 5 games.
Quite honestly, I think they’ll win four games in their division beating the Patriots once and then taking three out of four games against the Bills/Dolphins. Their out-of-division schedule has them playing a good NFC North, an AFC South in which anything seems possible, the Browns who should be in contention to win five games this season AKA their version of going to the Super Bowl, and the Broncos who drafted Bradley Chubb to play alongside Von Miller. That schedule won’t be easy.
3rd place: Buffalo Bills: 4-12
I’m going to list off all of the Buffalo Bills starting quarterbacks since 2002, which was the year that I started watching football: Drew Bledsoe, J.P. Losman, Kelly Holcomb, Trent Edwards, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Brohm, EJ Manuel, Thad Lewis, Jeff Tuel, Kyle Orton, Matt Cassel, Tyrod Taylor, and Nathan Peterman.
Yikes.
Aside from Bledsoe way back in the day, a few not totally horrible but still pretty bad seasons from Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Tyrod Taylor, who is easily the best of this bunch, this list is atrocious. In fact, you can argue that their fan’s favorite quarterback out of that list is Andy Dalton and he doesn’t even play on their team.
I hope that Josh Allen ends up being good because I honestly think he has the potential to become a very good poor man’s version of Aaron Rodgers. That being said, he’s extremely raw and needs to sit out a year. If he plays this season it’s not going to be pretty. If he doesn’t play this season, they’re starting Nathan Peterman who threw 10.2% percent of his passes to the other team last season. They also lost LT Cordy Glenn and troubled, albeit talented, G Richie Incognito.
They’ll be lucky to win 4 games.
4th place: Miami Dolphins: 4-12
I’ll bet after reading Buffalo’s preview that you didn’t think the AFC East could get any worse. Well, you’re wrong. The Miami Dolphins are going to be atrocious this season. In looking through their schedule, it was tough for me to even find 3 games for them to win.
Let’s start with the offense: Ryan Tannehill isn’t a franchise QB. He’s barely even startable. On top of that, they traded away his best receiver in Jarvis Landry. There’s going to be a huge drop off from him to Danny Amendola, who will probably miss at least a quarter of the season due to injury. I think that the offensive line will be okay at best.
On defense, their line is basically a few years away from getting their AARP cards, their cornerbacks are below average at best. The lone bright spot will be S Minkah Fitzpatrick.
This will be a long season for the Dolphins.
Summary: The Patriots will easily win this division again and the rest of the teams will be non-factors like pretty much every other season.