AFC East

Buffalo Bills: 4-1

New England Patriots: 3-2

New York Jets: 3-2

Miami Dolphins: 2-3

October 17, 2008.

The AFC East is a divisions of many ups and downs. Last year we saw an undefeated Patriots team lead by Tom Brady get beat by Eli Manning in Super Bowl 42. And in week 1 Tom Brady goes down with a season ending ACL tear. The Patriots seem to have scraped a 3 wins of their schedule but did lose to the division rival Jets and the San Diego Chargers. The Jets acquired lots of players this last offseason including G Alan Faneca from the Pittsburgh Steelers, Vernon Gholston in the Draft, and most importantly, Brett Favre from Green Bay. Throughout the entire Farve controversy he ended up getting traded to New York. The Jets look ok at 3-2, Brett had a great game against a bad Cardinals defense and went for a league tying record 6 touchdowns. Eric Mangini, the Jets head coach, is hoping that their running back, Thomas Jones gets more production. He is averaging 3.8 yards a carry that isn’t bad but he wants to develop a good running game. That allows Favre to call Play Action and go deep.

The Dolphins came off a disapointing season last year going 1-15. This year they started using the “Wildcat” formation. This is where their running back, Ronnie Brown, takes the snap with their Quaterback, Chad Pennington lined up as a Wide receiver. Ronnie now either runs a HB dive, hands off to their second running back Ricky Williams, or rolls out and throws it. Since Brown used to play Quaterback in highschool this has been successfull for Miami. Another nice option is that Brown tosses it to Williams who tosses it to Pennington who can throw it deep down field. The Dolphins used this formation 5 times on the Patriots and scored 5 touchdowns using it. The next week they had considerable success using it on the San Diego Chargers. The Dolphins have already beat the 2 teams sent to the AFC Championship game last season. With a heart-breaking loss to Houston last week in the final seconds its hard not to look at Miami as 3-3.

I finish off with the leader of the Division, the mighty Bills. Marshawn Lynch has produced great numbers for the Bills so far this year. He hasn’t fumbled once and gives Trent Edwards their quaterback a good passing attack. With Lee Evans at wide receiver in the mix the Bills and their improving defense really look like they could with the AFC East this year. I still consider this division to be open though as any team at any time could put on a winning streak.