The Patriots, again, enter the playoffs as the Super Bowl favorites (per the betting markets) but here’s something that should give you pause before backing a team that seems quite likely to reach the final NFL game of the year: They weren’t tested much this season.

Sure, they may have been pressed during the absence of Tom Brady, the team’s starting quarterback and a strong MVP candidate, for the first four games due to a suspension for his role in Deflategate, but on the whole New England played the easiest schedule in the NFL, a slate of games that included two divisional matchups against the 5-11 New York Jets and one each against the 1-15 Cleveland Browns, 2-14 San Francisco 49ers and 4-12 Los Angeles Rams. During the seven-game win streak to end the season, coach Bill Belichick had to overcome just one playoff team: the Dolphins in the last regular-season game of the season.

Take a look at the quarterbacks the Patriots have faced this season. The blue line represents the passer’s end-of-season Total Quarterback Rating, ESPN’s metric to value a quarterback on all play types on a 0-to-100 scale, and the red line is the average QBR of the top 20 passers in the NFL heading into Week 17. As you can see, it would take more than backups like Charlie Whitehurst, Jared Goff, Matt Moore and Landry Jones to throw a scare into Brady and Belichick. Moore, the Patriots’ opponent in Week 17, has a high QBR but was making his third start of the season, so discard that due to sample size. Other passers faced included Ryan Fitzpatrick (twice), the second-to-worst passer this season per QBR, Trevor Siemian, Brock Osweiler and Joe Flacco. None even met the average of a QB in the top two-thirds of the league.

Beating weak opponents issue free is exactly what you want to see from a good team like the Patriots, however, it may have masked a potential weakness by helping to make New England’s defense look better than it is. The Patriots allowed a league-low 1.4 points per drive, yet per Football Outsiders, the average offense they played against in 2016 was equivalent to the 7-8-1 Arizona Cardinals, a team that went three-and-out once out of every four drives, 23rd highest rate in the NFL.

One point before we proceed: their defense isn’t “clearly” a weakness, but we just don’t know based on their scheduling. And what we do know is that one metric paints a pretty murky picture about their defense’s potential to be great in the playoffs.

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Pressuring the passer hasn’t been a strength for the Patriots in recent history, but it has never been this bad in the Brady-era, either. This season, the team has a sack rate of 5.4 percent after adjusting for down, distance and opponent. The league average is 6.1 percent. In other words, the Patriots still ranked 23rd in the NFL despite not having to face very good offenses this year — and that will most certainly change in the playoffs. But the mitigating factor is “when” the Patriots will face those good offenses.

The Patriots will play the lowest remaining seed in the AFC during the divisional round, with potential opponents including the Miami Dolphins, Houston Texans and Oakland Raiders. The Kansas City Chiefs are the No. 2 seed, the Steelers the No. 3 and they could play New England in the AFC Championship Game. Two of those opposing offensive lines, the Raiders and Chiefs, tied for the least amount of pressure allowed this season (117 total sacks, hits and hurries allowed). The Steelers ranked seventh (133 pressures allowed). That’s challenging for any team to overcome, especially one with a mediocre pass rush.

Injuries to Derek Carr, Oakland’s starting quarterback (and potentially to backup Matt McGloin), and the presence of Alex Smith under center for the Chiefs might not be enough to sway you from backing New England as the eventual Super Bowl winner, but the Patriots will also have to beat a team from the NFC in order to claim the ultimate prize. And the Steelers could present a challenge as well. Remember, Ben Roethlisberger missed the earlier meeting between the Patriots and Steelers.

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Roethlisberger finished ranked No. 10 in QBR. In the other conference, the two top seeds in the NFC boast the second and third-best passers in the NFL per QBR, Ryan and Prescott, and Rodgers is close behind at No. 4. Matthew Stafford of the Detroit Lions finished at No. 8.

And those QBs will be a problem if the Patriots can’t create pressure. (And some may be trouble even if New England can get after the quarterback.)

The Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons ranked No. 3, No. 5 and No. 8, respectively, for least amount of pressure allowed by the offensive line this season. And their respective quarterbacks were among the best at producing with a clean pocket.

Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan led the league with a 130.4 passer rating in a clean pocket. Cowboys QB Dak Prescott ranked third (118.0) and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers ranked eighth (106.7). Rodgers proved this year that even when you pressure him he is still going to beat you. He threw 10 touchdowns and just one interception under pressure for a league-high 90.8 passer rating, a rating higher than the one produced by Carolina Panthers starting quarterback Cam Newton in a clean pocket (87.8) this season.

The No. 3 seed in the NFC, the Seattle Seahawks, saw its quarterback, Russell Wilson, produce the second-best passer rating (881.) and complete over half of his passes (55.4 percent) under pressure, despite a porous offensive line.

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One player to watch for New England is linebacker Dont’a Hightower. He finished 2016 with 25 total sacks, hits and hurries in 13 games, the most he has played since 2013, and was the highest-rated pass-rushing linebacker this season per the game charters at Pro Football Focus. The problem there? He was that good and the Patriots’ pass-rush was still mediocre. New England will need to see its other players overachieve if they are going to ramp up the pressure.