We haven’t even kicked off the 2024 season yet and there are teams that are being viewed as tanking (or atleast should be considering it). The Buffalo Bills are thankfully not viewed as one of those teams. Despite their losses on both sides of the ball in free agency, the Bills are not viewed as a team that should struggle this season.
Will they be the most dominant team that they have been the last four seasons? It’s highly unlikely. However, if the Bills don’t make the playoffs again it will be a big shock across the league.
The AFC East is going to be a neck-and-neck race once again as the Bills are looking to repeat as division champions, and both the Jets and Dolphins will be challenging them. Miami had the chance to take the division away from the Bills last year until they fell apart and practically gave the division away to Buffalo.
On paper, the Jets have arguably the best roster in the division and maybe even the AFC. They just seem to get hit with bad luck at some point and that is why they cannot win anything. With Aaron Rodgers coming back from his achilles injury and Robert Saleh coaching for his job, the Jets will be in contention to win the division.
While the focus of the division will be on these three teams, that leaves just the New England Patriots as the team on the outside looking in. Since Tom Brady’s departure in 2020, the Patriots have had just one playoff appearance and it turned into a 47-17 beatdown by the Bills. Bill Belichick ruined the development of Mac Jones and did not provide any valuable weapons on the offense.
New head coach Jerod Mayo steps into the command of the Patriots with quarterbacks Jacoby Brissett and rookie Drake Maye. New England is expected to be one of the worst teams in the NFL due to the fact that they have very limited talent, and they proved that by trading away pass rusher Matthew Judon to the Atlanta Falcons in exchange for a 2025 third-round pick.
Could the New England Patriots rebuild even more in 2024?
Matt Holder from Bleacher Report created a list of five teams that could possibly be “better off rebuilding” heading into the 2024 season. Holder placed the Patriots on this list and this couldn’t be more true.
While “tanking” means that the Patriots would be in a better position to build up their team next year, how great would it be to see yet another failure season by the team that dominated the Bills for nearly two decades?
The Patriots are clearly starting from scratch with their roster. The biggest problem is that they still have major work to do. Even though their defense still may be in the middle of the pact, their offense is not going to be anything special. The Bills will face off against the Patriots twice in the last three weeks of the season and there is a good chance that New England will be looking to get a high draft pick at that point.