Jimmy Garoppolo and the Pats have already survived Tom Brady's suspension
It's still four weeks until Tom Brady returns from his NFL-mandated vacation. Though his backup, Jimmy Garoppolo, was a completely unknown quantity and the fact that Brady's suspension limits him from playing catch with pretty much anybody except Gisele, any worries Patriots fans had about the Month Without Tom (dibs on the Lifetime movie rights!) were erased in about 10.5 hours on Sunday.
It's not because Garoppolo was a fine backup perfectly capable of pulling a Matt Cassel and keeping the team afloat until October. (He looks like he is.) It's not because the schedule is soft after the brutal Week 1 road trip to the 2015 NFC West champs. (It's like Charmin.) And it has nothing to do with Bill Belichick being a genius. (Sunday was in his top 10 coaching jobs ever, even though it did take the Cardinals botching a snap to get the W.)
No, the Patriots are set because the AFC East is pathetic, as usual. The non-New England teams have played 45 separate seasons since Tom Brady fortuitously came into Bill Belichick's life. In those seasons - 15 for each team - the Bills have no playoff appearances and the Dolphins have just one. Only the Jets, with six postseason bids over that span (surprising, right?), have put up a little fight. And they proved it again Sunday, going 0-3 and already giving New England sole possession of the lead in the East, a position they've been in for most of the 255 weeks in those 15 seasons.
I'll be the first to tell you the results of Week 1 can't be extrapolated over the 16-week season, but you can say this: Brady being out was a golden opportunity for the rest of the AFC East to get one over on the Patriots. They've already buttfumbled it.
Buffalo scored one touchdown in a loss to Baltimore. The Jets blew three separate leads in a home loss to Cincinnati. And the Dolphins lost by two in Seattle, which is no great shame except the team held a lead in the final minute and blew three separate opportunities to score points that would have ended up winning the game (a stuffed fourth-and-1 on Seattle's 17, a dropped surefire touchdown and a blocked chip-shot field goal).
Meanwhile, the Pats had their toughest game of their Brady-less adventure and came away with the victory. Garoppolo was fine - hardly electric but not a dud. The Cardinals secondary helped (as did that missed kick) but Garoppolo is going to be, at worst, Matt Cassel and that's just fine.
Thus, the AFC East looks as it usually does: New England in first and a traffic pileup behind.
Again, it's early. But when you have a quarter of the season to make ground on a team before its Hall of Fame quarterback returns, you can't blow three leads, a lead in the final minute and fail to tie a game, then go three-and-out on your last three possessions while down one score to a team that went 5-11 last year.
Now New England has three home games, including two against AFC East opponents (Miami and Buffalo are sandwiched around a visit from Houston). Let's be real: The Pats aren't going any worse than 1-2 in those games and none of the other three teams is going undefeated. That means, at best, there's a 2-2 tie atop the division when Brady makes his triumphant, hipster haircutted return and that's literally the best-case scenario for Miami, New York and Buffalo. When Brady returns it's 8-4 at worst. You tell me which AFC East team is getting to 10-6?
There's a long season ahead of us. Plenty can happen. After all, every AFC East team looked decent on Sunday. So this isn't to say no one will dethrone the Patriots from the top of the division they've owned for 15 years. It's just that the other three teams will never have a better chance to get one on Belichick, Brady and the Pats. They've already blown it.
