I think it's just too early to get much of a read on this team at the moment.
They could win their next 2 games prior to the bye, and go into the off week at 7-2 with some of their key players coming back from injury. That could lead them to a nice shot at a 12-4 record (assuming that we'd go 5-2 down the stretch in the last seven games) and a potential first round bye with the #2 seed.
The offense may start to show better signs of life with the return of Gronk, Amendola, + more of a commitment to running the ball with Ridley.
OR
They may end up continuing their horrid rush defense which is currently ranked 31st in the NFL, and is giving up 127 yds per game on the ground. Even worse, the numbers are around 150 yds per game since Wilfork left, and now that Mayo is gone too (and even Talib's future may be in doubt until after the bye week) the defense may be much closer to how we've looked in the last 2 games, where we've given up an average of 29 pts per game.
The offense may continue to go through their bad spell too, where we are currently on pace to punt almost 100 times this season. In comparison, the record for any Pats team is 103, and that year we went 2-14.
This would lead one to believe that they'd be much closer to a 10-6 (give or take a game) team, than one who has much of a shot in the postseason.
I think we'll know a lot more in the next 2 games in my opinion. It'd be huge to go into that bye week at 7-2 with some of the key injured players due to come back. We'd also have 4 of the 6 divisional games out of the way, and would stand firm with a 3-1 divisional record through the first 4 matchups.
If Miami wins this week however, it's really going to tighten up an already very tight division. If that is the case, anything is possible through the second half of the season and a 5-3 record would simply be one game above .500, so we'd be feeling the sting of all of these injuries and off-season problems. It would show that they're likely a LONG way off from being nearly the competitor that we as fans, thought that the team would be this year.