Tough division games

We hear comments all the time about tough division games. Are they? The Patriots are 12-1 in their last 13 division games.
Brady lifetime is 79-20 in division games.

Tougher than they need to be sometimes. But, except for a few random years here and there, the division has largely been an absolute joke through all of Brady's tenure. That's not different this season.

I think a better term would be unpredictable division games.

Divisional games are usually tougher due to familiarity but I will say this year against Buf and NY we played down to the competition.

Ras-IR Dowling said:

Divisional games are usually tougher due to familiarity but I will say this year against Buf and NY we played down to the competition.

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We won by 19 and 14 points.

Soliel said:

I think a better term would be unpredictable division games.

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Seems pretty predictable to me. We win 3 out of 4 times and the gap is getting wider.

They're typically close on the road, blowouts at home. Lol @ people saying going to Buffalo is always tough though because we do usually kill them regardless of where we play. Yesterday's win over the Meadowlands was the first blowout win there since the buttfumble game.

AndyJohnson said:

We won by 19 and 14 points.

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Yeah, and we looked pretty average doing it shooting ourselves in the foot with poor redzone play and penalties. Final score doesn’t tell the whole story.

Bills- it was 12-6 at the start of the 4Q
Jets-13-13 in the 3rd

Ras-IR Dowling said:

Yeah, and we looked pretty average doing it shooting ourselves in the foot with poor redzone play and penalties. Final score doesn’t tell the whole story.

Bills- it was 12-6 at the start of the 4Q
Jets-13-13 in the 3rd

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We won by 19 and 14 points. A game is 60 minutes. We allowed 1 touchdown in those 2 games combined and scored 27 ppg.

A few stats:

1. Since 2001 (I think) we have only swept the division twice. We went 4-2 seven times.

2. We have almost the same winning percentage inside the division (.777) as we do outside (.766) -- this link compiles that 2002-2016 but my guess is it's similar if you include the most recent two years:



3. Since 2013 we are 12-0 against the AFC North including 2 playoff games.

4. In the Brady era, the AFC East has been the best division in football by winning percentage. That of course is because the Patriots are in this division. But if you remove the Pats, and then (to make it fair) you remove the top team from every other division, and calculate the winning percentage of the bottom three teams, the AFC East is fifth out of eight. Not great, but not horrible.

5. The Dolphins and Jets have been right around .500 outside of their division (2002-2016), which makes them perfectly average. The Bills of course have been much worse, but every other division also has had a horrible team in that span, and if you rank the worst team in each division against each other, the Bills are actually the best!

Conclusions:

The Patriots would still have the same amount of success regardless of what division they are in. The theory of them having a huge advantage by playing in the AFC East is a myth.

The AFC East looks much worse by virtue of having to play the Patriots all the time. They also probably tailor their roster composition around trying to beat the Patriots, which is probably a suboptimal strategy.

The only good stat as a counterargument is the number of wildcard appearances per division, where I think the AFC East is last. This suggests that although the rest of our division isn't horrible (given the .500 record outside of the division), there also haven't been too many great teams to challenge us from time to time. The other divisions seem to cycle through each team going from great to horrible, while ours just stay consistently mediocre.

ETA: not sure why on the phone this whole Reddit page loads in the post, was just trying to post a link to the charts.

AndyJohnson said:

We won by 19 and 14 points. A game is 60 minutes. We allowed 1 touchdown in those 2 games combined and scored 27 ppg.

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We pulled away in the 4th in both games but I think we’re watching 2 different games here. Defensively, we did what we had to do to win against 2 of the worst offenses in the entire league. Offensively, we still stink in the redzone and still commit too many penalties allowing them to stay in the game longer than they should.

To be fair here's a good picture of how the Patriots compare to the rest of the AFC East in coaches and games by starting QBs (meaning QBs who started at least 6 games).

Bills coaches since 2001: 9
Bills starting QB's since 2001: 11

Jets coaches since 2001: 4
Jets starting QB's since 2001: 12

Dolphins coaches since 2001: 9
Dolphins starting QBs since 2001: 11

Patriots coaches since 2001: 1
Patriots starting QBs since 2001: 2

It's true that this team is not a product of a weak division nor has the AFC East other than the Patriots been a role model of stability and tough competition since 2001.

Ras-IR Dowling said:

We pulled away in the 4th in both games but I think we’re watching 2 different games here. Defensively, we did what we had to do to win against 2 of the worst offenses in the entire league. Offensively, we still stink in the redzone and still commit too many penalties allowing them to stay in the game longer than they should.

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We won both games easily. 1 combined TD allowed in 2 games is not “did what we had to do” it’s shutting down opponents.
A win is a win. And yes we are watching different games, I am watching 2 comfortable wins you are liking for things to bltch about

sb1 said:

To be fair here's a good picture of how the Patriots compare to the rest of the AFC East in coaches and games by starting QBs (meaning QBs who started at least 6 games).

Bills coaches since 2001: 9
Bills starting QB's since 2001: 11

Jets coaches since 2001: 4
Jets starting QB's since 2001: 12

Dolphins coaches since 2001: 9
Dolphins starting QBs since 2001: 11

Patriots coaches since 2001: 1
Patriots starting QBs since 2001: 2

It's true that this team is not a product of a weak division nor has the AFC East other than the Patriots been a role model of stability and tough competition since 2001.

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You missed JG and Brissett

Your title to this thread looks like an oxymoron. More often than not, these games are a joke whether it is close or not. Yesterday was a borefest for me and every other time they play a division opponent. They don't even deserve to be called rivals the as Bills, Jets and Dolphins have been so bad.

The division hasn't been exciting since the late 90's. I think the last time the division was truly on the line with Brady at QB was in 2002 when they lost at home to the Jets with Chad Pennington of all people dropping bombs. That was one bizarre game.

TB_Helmet said:

A few stats:

The Patriots would still have the same amount of success regardless of what division they are in. The theory of them having a huge advantage by playing in the AFC East is a myth.

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Critics are probably correct to point at the division but the benefit to the Patriots isn't really as cut and dried as they're making it seem. The Patriots aren't beating up on a bunch of 5-11 teams in the division every year. But they are the only team in the East built for long term success - the other teams are trying to figure out how to build a team year to year to beat the Patriots. Explains the volatility with their coaches and QBs.

The advantage is Patriots get an automatic home game for winning the division. In recent years they've clearly been among the top class of the AFC so their division quality wasn't that relevant. Sometimes they've exploited their division and finished first even when the team hasn't been that great. 2009 for example. And 2005. They got to host a playoff game vs the Jaguars despite the Jags finishing two wins better and being a Wild Card team.

Nehalem said:

You missed JG and Brissett

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I only counted those who started 6 games in a year as mentioned in my post. There are many other QBs in the division (like Tuel and Culpepper) who I didn't count for the same reason.

TheRainMaker said:

Your title to this thread looks like an oxymoron. More often than not, these games are a joke whether it is close or not. Yesterday was a borefest for me and every other time they play a division opponent. They don't even deserve to be called rivals the as Bills, Jets and Dolphins have been so bad.

The division hasn't been exciting since the late 90's. I think the last time the division was truly on the line with Brady at QB was in 2002 when they lost at home to the Jets with Chad Pennington of all people dropping bombs. That was one bizarre game.

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Jets in 2009 and 2010 as well.

Also what is the real point of this thread? A group therapy session for one old guy to convince himself that the Bills and Jets contests this season were cake walks? The Bills game especially was a contest where the final score doesn't indicate how tough that game was for New England to pull out.

AndyJohnson said:

We won both games easily. 1 combined TD allowed in 2 games is not “did what we had to do” it’s shutting down opponents.
A win is a win. And yes we are watching different games, I am watching 2 comfortable wins you are liking for things to bltch about

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I’m not saying we weren’t eventually going to win these games (I’m also confident we would get the W in both). I am saying we played down to these talent lacking teams allowing them to hang around longer than they should’ve due to shooting ourselves in the foot.