I saw a complaint yesterday about the Patriots benefitting most years from being in what tends to be one of the weakest divisions. While that might seem to be true, it’s simply not the case.
While it’s correct that the Jets, Bills and Dolphins have been down more often than up over the last 20 years, I don’t see anything in the numbers that suggests New England has benefitted from playing easy schedules.
I’ve got all of the numbers for the last 20 years. When I get them out, I see the Patriots are 53 games over .500. That is, they have played harder than usual schedules.
Keep in mind the scheduling formula. Each year, teams played 6 games inside their division. They played eight games against two other divisions (one in the AFC, one in the NFC). And the two remaining games are against the other two teams in your conference that placed in the same spot in their division. The Patriots have won the AFC East for most of the last 20 years, so those two games almost always have been returning playoff teams – Peyton Manning and the Colts essentially every year, along with teams like the Steelers, Chargers, Ravens and Kansas City.
Over the last 20 years, I see only five years where the Patriots entered the season projected to play a schedule where the opponents the previous season had over 10 more losses than wins. We’ll call those “easy” schedules. But I see nine such schedules where opponents had at least 10 more wins than losses.
It’s not about the schedule. It’s about Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the rest of the group up there tending to be better than the teams they’re playing against.
| NEW ENGLAND SCHEDULES (last 20 years) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | W | L | T | Pct | |
| 2001 | 126 | 130 | 0 | .492 | --- |
| 2002 | 129 | 127 | 0 | .504 | --- |
| 2003 | 135 | 121 | 0 | .527 | hard |
| 2004 | 131 | 125 | 0 | .512 | --- |
| 2005 | 138 | 118 | 0 | .539 | hard |
| 2006 | 121 | 135 | 0 | .473 | easy |
| 2007 | 137 | 119 | 0 | .535 | hard |
| 2008 | 99 | 157 | 0 | .387 | easy |
| 2009 | 151 | 105 | 0 | .590 | hard |
| 2010 | 136 | 120 | 0 | .531 | hard |
| 2011 | 129 | 127 | 0 | .504 | --- |
| 2012 | 116 | 140 | 0 | .453 | easy |
| 2013 | 133 | 123 | 0 | .520 | hard |
| 2014 | 131 | 123 | 2 | .516 | --- |
| 2015 | 122 | 134 | 0 | .477 | easy |
| 2016 | 134 | 122 | 0 | .523 | hard |
| 2017 | 135 | 121 | 0 | .527 | hard |
| 2018 | 124 | 132 | 0 | .484 | --- |
| 2019 | 120 | 134 | 2 | .473 | easy |
| 2020 | 137 | 118 | 1 | .537 | hard |
—Ian Allan