What is the future of the AFC East?

[mannc]

On 11/6/2024 at 2:15 PM, GunnerBill said:

Agree with all that. I expected more from the Jets but the Dolphins is a badly constructed roster with a serious lack of leadership at HC IMO. I said so pre-season and I stick by it. 

 

Peolple will say "ah but Tua was injured" and that is fair but they were beyond useless with the various back ups. Like couldn't move the ball at all bad. And they are 1-3 in games Tua has played. Sure two of those were the Bills but the one win was the narrow opening day win Jacksonville that but for an Etienne fumble inside the 5 they almost certainly lose. So while I agree they are better than 2-6 if they don't lose Tua, at the same time they are not a LOT better IMO. They are a flawed team mortgaged to the hilt. At the very least they will fire the GM I think and despite the deal he signed pre-season McDaniel needs a strong finish to keep his job too. I'd be inclined to give him another shot but I'm not sold on him as a Head Coach despite his obvious skill as an OC.

 

I expected better of the Jets but there was always a chance that Rodgers was more of a hinderence than a help and so it has turned out. He is his worst enemy and has been for a while. They were an "all in" team this year and there is some blowing up to be done there at the season's end. Totally new regime I think and a year of gutting the roster of all the high pricer vets ARod insisted on taking as much of the pain as you can in one year.  The worry is they have wasted two cheap years of Wilson and Sauce and they will both need mega deals soon. They could rebound if they draft the right QB imo... but they have to get a lot right.

 

The Pats are an unknown but if Maye can legit play they will contend sooner than later. Maybe not 2025 for the division but possibly beyond that. 

 

The problem for all three is that this was the weakest point in the Bills cycle. And they competitors missed it. Might be 3 or 4 years before the roster is this week again.

I would argue that the Dolphins are in the worst shape of the three.  As you said, they have a flawed roster, and are probably looking at a serious decline for Tyreek in the next year or so.  Worse yet, they are now committed to Tua, who is injury prone and, even when healthy, is not good enough to beat good teams late in the season.  
 

The Jets still have a lot of talent and will get a chance to start over with a new coach and QB next year.  And of course the Pats’ rebuild has already begun and shows at least some promise.

[Gregg]

1 minute ago, mannc said:

I would argue that the Dolphins are in the worst shape of the three.  As you said, they have a flawed roster, and are probably looking at a serious decline for Tyreek in the next year or so.  Worse yet, they are now committed to Tua, who is injury prone and, even when healthy, is not good enough to beat good teams late in the season.  
 

The Jets still have a lot of talent and will get a chance to start over with a new coach and QB next year.  And of course the Pats’ rebuild has already begun and shows at least some promise.

 

Can the Jets get a good coach? Woody Johnson is a terrible owner, and he gets involved with the football decisions. I could see many of the top coaching candidates staying away from the Jets.

[Logic]

I'll never forget in Marv Levy's autobiography where he states that in order to have a well-built and consistently winning football team, you need to be good from the top down. And by "the top", he meant ownership. If you have bad ownership -- meddlesome, cheap, absentee, whatever -- you're unlikely to be very good or for very long.

The Dolphins and Jets have bad ownership. So long as the men who own those teams continue to own them, I foresee continued turnover at GM, HC, and QB. The Pats have good ownership in Kraft, but he's getting older, and I have doubts about his ability to fully move past the Belichick glory days (witness his anointing Jerod Mayo as head coach without a particularly legitimate coaching search).

The Bills have an owner who is willing to give whatever money is necessary to the GM and HC and then get out of the way. He doesn't seem to be particularly meddlesome or cheap, and he's usually visible in the post-game locker room breakdowns, meaning he's probably not absentee (lack of public press conferences not withstanding).


In the immediate term:


The Dolphins have a head coach who, in my estimation, isn't long for head coaching duties there. I've seen this song and dance before: Whiz kid offensive play caller sets the league on fire, the league catches up to him, and he has no second act. I think his schtick will begin to wear thin. He'll have a long career as an OC in this league, but he is not a leader of men. Once he's out the door, will the next head coach want to stick with Tua? 

The Jets have tied themselves completely to the Aaron Rodgers clown show. They deserve everything that's happening to them. If and when they free themselves from him and start over, they're back to square one -- in need of a new head coach, new QB, possibly a new GM. All of it adds up to "not particularly threatening any time soon".

The Patriots' head coach doesn't appear to be cut out for the job. Their owner, for reasons I mentioned earlier, may not be trustworthy in terms of turning a page on the head coach if and when it becomes necessary. The young quarterback looks pretty good, and we all know that a franchise QB can turn things around pretty quickly.

Of the three teams in our division, the Pats are, in my estimation, the most likely to become a viable threat again in the near future, because at least they have a promising young QB prospect. One could make an argument for the Dolphins, but not so long as McDaniel is their head coach, in my opinion.


TL;DR: Franchise QB's health permitting, Josh Allen's Buffalo Bills are going to continue to own this division for the next decade.

Edited November 7 by Logic