The New England Patriots are undeniably fantastic. They don’t have a ton of competition this season. Both statements can be true.

The NFC is deep. You can make a strong argument for multiple teams being the best in the conference. Good, quality teams will be left out of the playoffs in that conference. There are championship-level teams at the top and a lot of capable teams throughout.

The AFC might not have two good teams.

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Week 8 provided more evidence that the Patriots might not even sweat in Foxborough this January on their way to another Super Bowl:

• The Buffalo Bills, the only AFC team other than the Patriots with fewer than two losses heading into Week 8, were blown out by a 3-4 Eagles team at home. Advanced metrics don’t love the Bills, and they didn’t look good on Sunday.

• The Kansas City Chiefs lost their third home game in a row. Yes, Patrick Mahomes was out. But the Chiefs have lost two home games with Mahomes, and their defense is still not great (while acknowledging their injuries on defense have made a big difference).

• The Houston Texans just lost J.J. Watt for the rest of the season.

• The Indianapolis Colts struggled at home to beat a bad Denver Broncos team, needing a last-minute, 51-yard field goal to pull it off. The Colts have also lost to the Raiders at home.

• The Baltimore Ravens ... well, we’ll see.

The Ravens have their shot in Week 9 to give Patriots haters some hope. They host the Patriots on Sunday night, coming off a bye. Baltimore has a mixed bag of results (beating a lot of bad teams and sometimes barely getting by them, getting blasted by the Browns at home, but coming off a very impressive road win at Seattle) and they present matchup issues. Lamar Jackson is unique and hard to stop. The Patriots have been phenomenal against conventional offenses, but this is a different challenge.

Here’s the scary thought: What if the Ravens get blown out? Then what?

A healthy Chiefs team is probably the best remaining candidate to beat the Patriots. Maybe it’s the Texans just because Deshaun Watson is insanely good and seems capable of anything. Aside from the old “any given Sunday” cliche, there’s no good reason to believe any other AFC team can come within 10 points of New England at home in the playoffs. Mahomes and Watson are the only reasons those teams even have a puncher’s chance.

And to be clear, the road to the Super Bowl is very likely to go through New England. The only scenario for a team other than the Patriots getting the No. 1 seed, outside of major injuries, starts with a Ravens win on Sunday. Baltimore would be just one loss behind New England with the tiebreaker. However, if the Patriots win they’d be up at least three games on every AFC team other than the Bills and Colts, who have two losses each. And nobody should believe the Colts or Bills are going to pass the Patriots.

Sometimes the AFC East’s incompetence outside of New England is overstated by fans who want to discount the Patriots’ dynasty. The AFC East’s bumbling isn’t the only reason the Patriots have been great, or even one of the top few reasons. But it does help. The Patriots haven’t had a serious challenger in the division for a long time.

The same might be true about the entire AFC this season. It doesn’t mean the Patriots aren’t great. Their defense could be historic, and their offense is good, too. But it’s also true that nobody else in the AFC looks very good. Maybe that changes with a Ravens upset in Week 9, or perhaps Mahomes or Watson can have a day for the ages against the Patriots in January.

We’re not even halfway through the season and anyone hoping to avoid the Patriots on Super Bowl Sunday this season should be running out of hope.

Bill Belichick and his New England Patriots are the AFC's clear favorite. (Getty Images) More