2019 AFC East Preview

Another year, another easy coast to a division title for the Patriots. I’m not even going to pretend there might be drama this year. Until I see something different, the Patriots are still the favorites in the AFC and the rest of these teams are fighting just to remain relevant.

New England Patriots

The Upside

I need to just start copying and pasting this section every year. The Patriots are the Patriots, and they will remain the Patriots for as long as they have Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. They are going to win the division, and they are the favorites to be the AFC’s representative in the Super Bowl. Every year they lose some pieces—most notably Rob Gronkowski this year—and every year they find a different way to win games.

Without Gronkowski they probably won’t be as lethal in the passing game. So I expect them to focus more on the run, with last year’s first round pick Sony Michel taking on an even more significant role in the offense. They lost their best pass rusher in Trey Flowers, but the strength of their defense was their secondary, and they’ll be fine there. No matter what happens, they always find ways to win, because Belichick is head and shoulders above every other coach in the league.

The Downside

We can point to some cracks that started appearing last year. They were 3-5 on the road during the regular season, including some embarrassing losses. They really didn’t do anything to replace their biggest offensive weapon, and their defensive line is showing the effects of having whiffed on high draft picks at an alarming rate in recent years. There are holes in this roster, but there are always holes in this roster, and ultimately any sort of failure will come down to one critical factor.

Tom Brady has slowed down some as he has aged, but he is still an elite quarterback capable of carrying this offense as far as it needs to go. However, research has shown that when it comes to aging quarterbacks, it isn’t as much a gradual decline as a sudden cliff. Brady is 42 years old, and we have never seen a quarterback play at a competent level at that age in the NFL. There is always a risk that one day he will go out there and simply not have it anymore, and if that happens this team doesn’t have the supporting cast of talent to carry him to a Super Bowl victories like the Broncos did for Peyton Manning when his time came.

Player to Watch – Isaiah Wynn, OT

I normally steer clear of former first round picks in this section, but Wynn is flying low enough under the radar that he’s worth calling out. I mentioned Michel above, but he was actually New England’s second selection out of Georgia in the first round in 2018. His teammate Wynn went off the board eight picks ahead of him, and together they will form the foundation of the running game New England is trying to build.

Wynn missed his entire rookie campaign due to an offseason injury, but all indications are that the Patriots expect him to slide right in at left tackle. They let last year’s starter Trent Brown go as a free agent, trusting that their high investment will pay off. Wynn is better in the running game than the passing, and some thought coming out of college that he would be a better fit at guard. But playing tackle for Brady is one of the best jobs in the world, and he’ll have a comfortable transition as he works his way into the NFL. This offensive line has been up and down over the past few years, but they haven’t had a talent like Wynn, a player who has the potential to develop into a stabilizing force if the day ever comes that they no longer have Brady at quarterback.

New York Jets

The Upside

Of the other teams in the AFC East the Jets are the only ones who seem actively interested in competing this season. They spent a ton of money in free agency, and would have committed even more if Anthony Barr hadn’t spurned them. But adding CJ Mosley (ridiculously overpaid as he is) and first round pick Quinnen Williams beside star Leonard Williams gives them an elite foundation for the middle of their defense. If they can get reasonable contributions from last year’s big free agent addition Trumaine Johnson and developing young safety Jamal Adams, this defense has the potential to take a major leap forward.

Sam Darnold had a pretty standard rookie season. A flashy star and a strong finish, with a few highs and a lot of lows in the middle. And that means he could pretty much go either way in his second year. He could have a major breakout bolstered by do-everything weapon Le’Veon Bell and behind a veteran offensive line, opening this offense up and giving them the chance to compete in any game. They still aren’t loaded with talent on the outside, which will limit their offensive ceiling some, but with a jump forward from their defense they can live with simple competence on offense and still compete for a playoff spot.

The Downside

This could be the season where Darnold breaks out, or it could be the season where he proves he really can’t play in the NFL. For a long stretch in the middle of last season he was the worst quarterback in the league. That sort of thing can happen to a rookie quarterback in a bad situation, but if it recurs in his second year—with more help around him and more experience under his belt—it will be catastrophic for New York’s long term hopes.

I have to say that I have no idea what the Jets were doing hiring Adam Gase as their head coach. The situation in Miami obviously wasn’t ideal, but nothing he did in his three seasons there indicates that he brings anything positive as a head coach. Sometimes teams can get a boost from adding a new coach, but other times it can go the opposite direction, as the franchise gradually realizes they have made a mistake and the despair of being stuck with such mediocrity sinks the season.

Player to Watch – Jordan Jenkins, EDGE

The Jets have had stars in the middle of their defense for years, and yet they’ve never really been able to find anyone to come off the edge. They’ve whiffed on big draft picks like Vernon Gholston and Quinton Coples at the position, and at this point it seems like they’ve almost given up on investing in what might be the most important position on the defense. They spent a third round pick on Jachai Polite this year, but other than that you have to go back to 2016 to find the last time they used a draft pick on a pass rusher.

That pick was Jenkins, a third rounder out of Georgia who has gradually taken over a starting role in their defense. He had a mild breakout last year with seven sacks, decent but unspectacular production for a team’s primary edge rusher. The strength of this rush will still come from the two Williams stars on the inside, but if they can get double digit sacks from someone on the edge it will make life a lot easier for their secondary, and give them a chance to make the leap they need on defense.

Buffalo Bills

The Upside

The Bills entered the offseason knowing that they desperately needed to help their young quarterback. But there’s only so much a team can do in one year, and after playing 2018 with a bottom five offensive line and receiving corps, they were only able to address the first one. That’s a pretty good summary of where the Bills are at entering 2019. They aren’t ready to compete yet, but as long as they see some forward progress through the year, they’ll finish the season satisfied with their results.

Some development from the young players on their defense would be nice, but this year is all about Josh Allen. He wasn’t the disaster some expected in his rookie season, but he hardly locked himself in as the starter of the future in Buffalo. He’s in a better position to succeed in his second year, with a rebuilt offensive line and a little bit more talent at receiver. Now he has to show that he’s capable of developing into the player his physical tools make us imagine. He needs to be more comfortable as a passer, he needs to make better decisions, and he needs to look at least competent for stretches of the season to build optimism heading into 2020, the year that actually matters for Buffalo.

The Downside

On the other hand, any sort of regression or stagnation by Allen basically spells doom for the future of this team. That’s the way it works with a highly drafted quarterback, and that’s the boat the Bills are in right now. They did everything they could to improve things around Allen, but there still wasn’t that much they could do. Allen is going to be under siege for the second season in a row, and things could get ugly in a hurry.

How ugly is probably a function of their defense. The unit is a weird cobbled together unit of anonymous veterans with an extremely young and extremely talented player in Tremaine Edmunds in the middle. If everything goes right, the veterans form a solid unit while Edmunds leaps forward his development to give them a top ten defense. Alternatively, Edmunds could stagnate while the rest of their defense proves to be just a bunch of replacement level bodies, leaving them nothing to help a sputtering offense.

Player to Watch – Robert Foster, WR

Foster isn’t exactly anonymous after a strong finish to his rookie season. After only two receptions for 30 yards over the first half of 2018, he erupted with 25 catches for more than 500 yards over the second half. He is an elite deep threat, with a 4.41 forty that works perfectly with Allen’s cannon of an arm. And he heads into 2019 as the explosive threat in an offense that is otherwise built around grinding things out underneath.

The question is how he can develop the rest of his game. He played very sparingly in college at Alabama, largely because he couldn’t round out his game to contribute on an offense that was loaded with more versatile talent. That wasn’t as much of an issue in Buffalo a year ago, but with additions like John Brown and Cole Beasley he’s going to have more competition for playing time. He will be a lot more useful if he can threaten defenses in other ways on a play by play basis, rather than just being a rotation option who only runs deep.

Miami Dolphins

The Upside

More than any other team in the league the Dolphins are very clearly entering a rebuilding year. They cleaned out their coaching staff and most of their veterans, including longtime not-quite-answer at quarterback Ryan Tannehill. This year they’ll be rolling with some combination of Josh Rosen and Ryan Fitzpatrick under center—the former as a high upside swing for the future and the latter as a desperation stopgap attempt at competence.

Whoever they start, they aren’t going to win many games. They have enough options on offense to put up some points, but their defense is going to be a disaster. They’re solid in the secondary, and everywhere else they look like a unit made up of backups. Even if they find some competence on offense throwing the ball down the field to Kenny Stills and Albert Wilson, they’re going to need far more consistency than either of their quarterbacks have ever shown to put up enough points to win more than a small handful of games.

The Downside

On the other hand, I think the pieces Miami has on offense will keep them from being the sort of mess that ends up at the top of the draft. They have a developing young left tackle in Laremy Tunsil that will bring some stability to their offensive line, and even if Rosen is a disaster, Fitzpatrick is the sort of veteran quarterback who can explode for a performance that will win them a couple of games.

Their schedule will keep them from bottoming out as well. Obviously a pair of games against both the Bills and the Jets will be nice, but they also have winnable opportunities against the Bengals, Redskins, and Giants (plus they get Pittsburgh at home, which is the sort of game the Steelers always manage to screw up). I think this team sits in a fairly narrow window of possibilities, somewhere between four and six wins.

Player to Watch – Kenyan Drake, RB

I’ve been doing this too long. The first two players that came to mind when I looked at this roster were Xavien Howard and Albert Wilson, but they were the players I highlighted the past two seasons. So rather than doubling down on one of them, I’ll pick the running back whose inability to establish himself as a star is a little bit perplexing. Through three seasons Drake has averaged 4.7 yards per carry as well as adding nearly a thousand yards as a receiver, all despite never averaging even ten carries a game during any season.

Drake’s efficiency numbers should earn him a much larger role, and his explosiveness and versatility should make him the focal point of this offense. And yet on Miami’s first depth chart he was listed as the co-starting running back with the plodding and significantly less talented Kalen Ballage. I don’t know what he has to do to earn the feature role of this offense, but if he can pull it off it will be a major boost for a team that could really, really use it.