If Mike Vrabel could draw up the perfect scenario through the first third of the 2025 regular season, this would be it for his New England Patriots.
Second-year quarterback Drake Maye is ascending into elite territory. The defense is developing a bend-but-don’t-break mentality with just about everyone on that side of the ball contributing. The franchise has managed to turn its two biggest weaknesses of the past several years — left tackle and wide receiver — into positions of strength.
Oh, and the team is 4-2, off to its best start since Tom Brady’s Patriots opened 8-0 during the 2019 regular season.
The arrow is firmly pointing up on New England, and the good times could continue to roll through October. The two lowest scoring teams in football on a points-per-game basis — the Tennessee Titans (13.8) and Cleveland Browns (13.7) — are up next on the schedule.
New England enters Week 7 ranked 11th in scoring and hasn’t surrendered more than 20 points defensively over its current three-game win streak. The question now isn’t whether this young team belongs among the AFC’s playoff contenders — more like, is this already a top-10 team in the entire NFL?
NFL analyst places Patriots in some eye-popping company following Saints win
The Patriots definitely left some meat on the bone in New Orleans, but Vrabel’s group deserves credit for side-stepping a potential trap game.
It’s never easy to win games at Caesars Superdome, and the Saints had been competitive despite a 1-4 start. Couple that with the high of last week’s Sunday night upset over the Buffalo Bills, and all the ingredients were there for a letdown.
That didn’t happen. The Patriots come out firing, with three touchdown drives in their four first-half possessions. Maye was never sacked, nor committed a turnover. Had it not been for some head-scratching penalty calls and a running game that just couldn’t gain traction, the Patriots would have flown back to Foxboro with a much more comfortable victory.
Sayre Bedinger of FanSided’s NFL Spin Zone isn’t sweating New England’s suspect schedule or a six-point win over Spencer Rattler and the Saints. He moved the Patriots up to No. 13 in his Week 7 power rankings — one spot behind the reigning AFC Champion Kansas City Chiefs, and two spots behind the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.
“A win on Sunday against the Saints pushed this team to 4-2 on the season, and this New England team is firmly a threat in the AFC, which started slow as a conference but has picked things up as of late.”
Bedinger notably has the Patriots ranked ahead of two fellow four-win teams: the Los Angeles Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars. The very beatable Denver Broncos (4-2) are 10th; the other AFC teams ranked ahead of New England, including the aforementioned Chiefs, are the Steelers, Colts, and Bills.
The Patriots have everything they could want in front of them. They’re 2-0 in the division, and a win this week over the lowly Titans — a game that should be personal for Vrabel, facing the franchise that fired him despite a 54-45 overall record and three playoff berths — would move the team to 5-2 entering back-to-back home games against the Browns and Falcons.
This is no fluke. New England has spent the past three weeks proving they belong in a different weight class, with the win at Buffalo the clear statement. If they can continue to take advantage of some bad football teams on their schedule, the Patriots will only keep climbing in what’s looking like a wide-open AFC race.