Imagine Roger Goodell's predicament.

Imagine being the commissioner of the NFL and alienating one of the league's marquee franchises by handing its wildly popular quarterback a suspension for air-pressure levels in footballs. That's exactly what took place when Goodell suspended Tom Brady for the first four games of this season for the Deflategate scandal. It fractured Goodell's relationship with team owner Robert Kraft and led a fan base to view him as a villain.

Now, jump ahead to the end of the 2016 season. Imagine Goodell standing on a podium in front of millions of viewers around the world as he hands the Lombardi Trophy for Super Bowl LI to Brady - the league MVP - and Bill Belichick - the coach of the year. That's the reality he faces as the Patriots are on track to sweep all three awards.

It's no foregone conclusion that New England will finish this season as Super Bowl champs, but at 8-2 with the best record in the AFC, it's a near certainty that they will at the very least play in the AFC Championship game. Going into Week 11, the Patriots owned the best odds of winning the AFC at 5/7. Their odds of winning the Super Bowl were also at 7/5 and that was before they shut down the San Francisco 49ers 30-17 on Sunday.

It's likely Goodell is preparing for the event in which he has to hand the Super Bowl trophy to a team that called his Deflategate investigation "flawed and biased."

The realistic case for the Patriots winning the Super Bowl has been laid out, so let's look at the chances the team will also take home two other major awards.

NFL MVP

Brady was the favorite to win the league MVP award as recently as last week. He now trails Ezekiel Elliott in the race, but he's still being given 11/4 odds to win the most coveted player award.

It seems almost unfair that Brady could win the trophy seeing as he missed a quarter of his team's games, but in his six games since the suspension, Brady has completed a personal-best 70.4 percent of his passes while throwing for 16 touchdowns and just one interception. If the season were to end today, he would also have the best QB rating of his career.

He's second only to Matt Ryan in yards per pass and third behind Ryan and Drew Brees in average yards per game.

He's led the Patriots to five wins in his six contests and he's doing this all in his age 39 season.

It may not yet be Brady's best year - that indisputably remains his MVP season in 2007 - but he is among the best players of this season and it may lead to an awkward interaction between he and Goodell the day before the Super Bowl.

Coach of the Year

Belichick just may tie Don Shula for the most Coach of the Year awards in NFL history when all is said and done this season. Belichick won in 2003, 2007, and 2010, but it's widely accepted that he should be under consideration for the award in just about every season.

That is definitely the case for this year. With what may be the least talented club of his tenure, Belichick's Patriots safely navigated Brady's four-game suspension by winning three of four games and have cruised to the best record in the conference.

Belichick outfoxed Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians in the first game of the year, used a third-stringer to beat and shut out the AFC South's best team in the Houston Texans in Week 3 and earned wins against AFC contenders in the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers in back-to-back weeks.

The rest of the Patriots' schedule shapes out nicely as their few remaining challenges come against the Denver Broncos in Week 15 and two games against the New York Jets. New England could conceivably run the table the rest of the way to finish with a 14-2 record. Barring the Dallas Cowboys doing the same, that would give them the best record in the league and the best argument for Belichick winning a fourth Coach of the Year award.

In his evisceration of the league's decision to suspend Brady, Kraft said "our full focus now is on making the upcoming season a memorable one for all of our fans." If things play out the way they're going, it'll likely be a season to forget for Goodell.