'Fool's gold': How concerning is Patriots' soft schedule when it comes to playoff success?

The New England Patriots enter Week 12 in the driver's seat to win the AFC East. They have a two-game lead over the Buffalo Bills, have already won the first head-to-head meeting and only play one game the rest of the way against a team that currently a winning record — Buffalo. 

The biggest story involving the Patriots this season is the emergence of second-year quarterback Drake Maye and his rise to stardom. He has changed everything for the franchise and, on the surface, has made them a viable Super Bowl contender in a wide-open AFC. 

Are the Patriots "fool's gold"?

Former Patriots quarterback and one-time NFL MVP Came Newton referred to New England as "fool's gold." Why? The team's schedule.

The subplot to the Patriots' success is the aforementioned schedule itself. Specifically, how soft it has been. The Patriots enter Week 12 having played what is mathematically the NFL's second-softest schedule, with only the Chicago Bears (.348) having a lower strength of schedule number than the Patriots (.363). 

Along with that, the Patriots' strength of victory (.355) is the second-lowest among teams currently in a playoff position, ahead of only the Bears (.285). 

If there is a red flag with teams like the Patriots and Bears, it is the simple fact they have both played extremely favorable schedules to this point and have not yet been fully tested. But does this mean anything when it comes to potential playoff success?

It might.

NFL teams with low strength of victory numbers tend to struggle in playoffs

There are no easy games in the NFL. This is not college football where Alabama can just schedule a directional school from Missouri and pay them money to show up for a 60-point win. Everybody is good. Everybody is capable of beating everybody else on any given week. But there are games that are significantly tougher than others. So far this season, the Patriots and Bears not really played any of those.

New England, for example, has played just four teams that currently have a winning record. It is 3-1 in those games, having beaten Buffalo, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Carolina Panthers, while also losing to Pittsburgh.

The Bears, meanwhile, have played just one game against a team with a winning record (the Detroit Lions) and lost by 31 points. The Bears also have a 14-point loss to a .500 Baltimore Ravens team.

But what exactly does this mean for the playoffs? 

Well, if you go back over the past 10 seasons, there have been 23 teams that entered the playoffs with a strength of victory number of .400 or lower. 

(Strength of victory and schedule numbers via ESPN's playoff standings page.)

Only nine of those 23 teams won a playoff game.

Only three of them (the 2024 Washington Commanders, 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars) won more than one playoff game. 

Combined, those teams went just 14-21 overall in their respective playoff games. That is only a .400 winning percentage. Not exactly a lot of success once they started playing tougher teams. 

Only one team that has appeared in a Super Bowl over the past 10 years has done so with a strength of victory number lower than .400 (the 2020 Buccaneers), while no Super Bowl team over that stretch has had a lower strength of schedule number than .439. 

At the end of the day teams can only play who the NFL tells them to play. Good teams also should beat up on lesser teams. Nobody should apologize for winning in the NFL. But there can still be some questions as to how good certain teams actually are.

The Patriots have games with Buffalo and Baltimore remaining that will be their toughest tests.

The Bears play a daunting schedule the rest of the way with Pittsburgh, Detroit, the Philadelphia Eagles, the San Francisco 49ers and Green Bay Packers (twice). 

How those teams do in those games will tell us a lot about their playoff chances.