The New England Patriots can defend their AFC East title in 2026 without matching last season’s 14-3 record.
That distinction sits at the center of an early division debate.
Three of ESPN’s four AFC East reporters picked the Buffalo Bills to reclaim the division.
Miami Dolphins reporter Marcel Louis-Jacques argued New England exceeded expectations in 2025 and would return toward the mean against a harder schedule.
New York Jets reporter Rich Cimini wrote that the Patriots “caught a lot of breaks” and benefited from soft opposition.
The schedule criticism is fair, but does it mean they will automatically fare worse in 2026 than 2025?
Patriots Had an Easy Schedule, but Their Numbers Were Elite
New England’s 2025 opponents finished with a combined .391 winning percentage.
CBS Sports reported that it was tied for the third-easiest schedule played by any NFL team over the previous 50 seasons.
Now this year, their schedule is certainly different.
ESPN’s schedule analysis ranked the Patriots’ 2026 slate as the sixth-hardest based on their opponents’ records from last season, with a combined winning percentage of .531.
Meanwhile, New England went 7-3 in games decided by eight points or fewer in 2025, so a few late-game swings could turn 14 victories into 11 or 12 without signaling a serious collapse.
But the broader results don’t resemble a team held together by fortunate bounces.
The Patriots scored 490 points and allowed 320, producing a 170-point differential.
They finished second in the NFL in scoring and fourth in points allowed, and their average point differential per game was 10 points.
The advanced numbers made the same argument.
SumerSports ranked New England first in offensive EPA per play at 0.13. The defense allowed minus-0.05 EPA per play, placing the Patriots among the league’s most balanced teams.
A.J. Brown Changes the Patriots’ Regression Argument
Buffalo still has the strongest individual argument in the division: Josh Allen.
ESPN Bills reporter Alaina Getzenberg picked Buffalo because Allen gives the team a chance every week.
Cimini also called him the AFC East’s best player, while Louis-Jacques pointed to the addition of DJ Moore as Allen’s best receiving weapon since Stefon Diggs.
Those are reasonable reasons to select the Bills.
But New England also addressed the clearest weakness from its Super Bowl season.
The Patriots traded for A.J. Brown after releasing Diggs and signed Romeo Doubs in free agency.
Brown has recorded four consecutive 1,000-yard season, and Doubs is coming off career highs of 55 catches and 724 yards, potentially the best wide receiver pairing for the Patriots since Randy Moss and Wes Welker.
Drake Maye already led the Patriots to the league’s most efficient offense without Brown or Doubs, finishing 2025 with 4,394 passing yards, 31 touchdowns and eight interceptions while completing 72% of his passes.
The schedule gets tougher.
But Maye’s supporting cast gets better.
New England can regress in the standings and still improve as a football team. An 11-6 or 12-5 finish against a stronger schedule could say more about the Patriots than last year’s 14 victories did.
Buffalo deserves to enter the season as a threat to reclaim the division since Allen remains the established star, and the Bills split the season series with New England last year.
Nonetheless, writing off the Patriots as a fortunate team headed toward an inevitable fall goes too far.
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