It’s a yearly complaint: the Patriots get to be ‘the Patriots’ in part because the rest of the AFC East has been a joke. New England gets to pile up easy wins en route to a bye and/or home field advantage, while other division winners must work much harder.

It’s an easy narrative to believe- for starters, the Patriots have won the division every year since 2001 except 2002 (Jets) and 2008 (Dolphins). It’s also been well-established that the Patriots’ playoff runs are much deeper with the benefit of a bye than without. So, do the Pats have an advantage simply by being in the AFC East? I split each AFC team’s record into divisional and non-divisional games to find out.

Divisional Games

First off, the Patriots have not won more division games than the typical division winner over the past five years except for the AFC South, where the Texans and Colts (and Jaguars in 2017) have taken turns knocking each other down.

We can glean a couple things from this:

It’s hard for division winners to gain an advantage over each other by winning divisional games. There appears to be win ceiling here. No matter the difference in talent between divisional foes, it’s simply very difficult to win 5+ games in your division each year.

The Patriots have 2 more division titles than the Chiefs and Steelers, despite only having a 1- win difference in division games over 5 years.

The major difference between the bottom three AFC East teams and the other divisions’ lowest three teams is that the East is consistently mediocre, but they are not outright bad as often claimed. Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Denver aren’t significantly different from Buffalo and Miami, but they managed to put together a complete competitive season, generally by taking care of business intra-division. Buffalo, Miami, and the Jets often beat each other up enough to prevent a challenge to the East throne. If the Bills could sweep both the Jets and Dolphins in a given season, the division is much more likely to be in play- but that just isn’t the case for any of those 3 teams in recent memory.

I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here. The Patriots are slightly more likely to win their division than other AFC contenders, but that alone doesn’t explain why they always seem to get home field advantage.

Non-Divisional Games

The Patriots have far and away the best non-divisional record over the past 5 years, over 1 game better per-year than the 2nd place team, the Steelers.

This is enough to put the ‘Patriots get byes because the AFC East is terrible’ argument to bed. Sometimes, the simplest answer is the right answer: New England is pretty good.

But let’s dive a little deeper anyway. If the East is so terrible, the other three teams should collectively have worse records than the bottom three teams from the other divisions:

The East is the second-best AFC division over the past 5 years, with the AFC West being a murderers' row. However, this whole argument stems from the Patriots not having an intra-division threat, so let’s compare 2nd place teams in each division for good measure:

Buffalo appears to be an average 2nd place team. (It should be noted the Bills have a better non-divisional record than all 4 AFC South teams!)

Conclusion

So how do the Patriots get byes and home field so regularly?

The AFC South’s terrible non-divisional record makes a playoff bye very difficult to earn.

The AFC West is so good that their division records may pull them down from records that could beat New England’s.

The AFC North is most similar to the East and pose the most consistent threat to a bye and home field advantage.

The AFC East is an average, typical division except in one regard- very little variance in wins per given team on a season-by-season basis. Buffalo and Miami don’t show the same ups and downs you would find in other divisions (IND, BAL, DEN, LA). It’s not hard to win a division when the other teams win 6-9 games most seasons.

However, the Patriots really do deserve most of the credit. They may look like a typical division winner by divisional record, but they are in a league of their own in non-divisional record. Pittsburgh in 2nd place is as close to Buffalo in 8th as they are to the Pats in 1st. That’s unbelievable, and of course it should be noted that many of the Patriots' non-divisional wins came at the expense of the other top AFC contenders, furthering the divide between them.

The Patriots do not get much of an advantage from the East- at least not enough to make a bye or home field advantage a cakewalk. The imbalance in parity between the West and the South plays a more significant role, but it’s the Patriots own non-divisional record that matters most.

The AFC East is not some doormat where the Pats automatically crank out 6 wins a year, and New England wins divisional games at about the same rate as they do non-divisional games. It turns out the Patriots, winners of 3 of the past 5 Super Bowls, are pretty good. So let’s put this argument to rest: stop blaming the AFC East for failing to stop a team that the rest of the conference can’t stop either.

Go Bills.