Putting the Patriots in Perspective

By now, I'm sure you've heard all the praises in the world for the Patriots, but all of them are meaningless unless the Patriots a) win the AFC East and b) win the Super Bowl. Nothing else matters in the game of football. So I wondered, with how great the Patriots are playing, and how terrible the rest of the division is playing, how soon could the Patriots clinch the division?

Right now, the official standings look like this.

AFC EAST	W	L	T	PCT	PF	PA	STRK	DIV	CONF
New England	6	0	0	1.000	230	92	Won 6	2-0	5-0
Buffalo	1	4	0	.200	65	118	Lost 1	1-1	1-3
NY Jets	1	5	0	.167	105	154	Lost 3	1-2	1-3
Miami	0	6	0	.000	128	182	Lost 6	0-1	0-4

The Patriots are currently 5 games ahead of the Bills and Jets with 10 games remaining. Now here come all the big if's...

IF: The Patriots win their next 3 games (at Miami, home versus Washington, at Indy), then the Patriots would be 9-0 heading into their Week 10 bye.

IF: The Dolphins lose their next 2 games (home versus New England, home versus the Giants), then they will be 0-8 heading into their Week 9 bye.

IF: The Jets lose their next 3 games (at Cincinnati, home versus Buffalo, home versus Washington), then they will be 2-7 heading into their Week 10 bye.

IF: The Bills lose 2 of their next 3 games (BYE week followed by a loss at home versus Baltimore, win at the Jets, loss at home against Cincinnati) then they would be 2-6 heading into Week 10.

Thus, the division would look like this after 9 weeks.

AFC EAST	W	L	T
New England	9	0	0
Buffalo	2	6	0
NY Jets	2	7	0
Miami	0	8	0

The Patriots would then be 7 games up with 7 games to go. Now, the Patriots are statistically unable to clinch the division if all goes as planned above while watching the Week 10 games from their couch(but only because their division record would not yet guarantee them the division), but they play the Bills in Week 11 and if they win that game, they will clinch the division on November, 18th. Now I know there are a lot of if's in all this, but the truth is that it could happen. Oh, and the current earliest clinching of the division happen in the year 2004 and was done by the Philadelphia Eagles and we all know how far they went that season.