The Patriots dominance of this division over the years has hinged on two major factors. Number 1 is their ability to consistently reinvent themselves, and to find value and cultivate talent seemingly out of nowhere. Number 2 is the inability of the rest of the teams to come close to being able to do this, and instead to wheel out varying degrees of ineptitude through the years.

So the question of whether anything is going to change in this division is likely to once again come down to whether either of those 2 factors are going to be any different this year.

Let’s start with the Patriots and what the new and reinvented Patriots will look like in 2019. The most glaring element that they will need to address is the absence of Rob Gronkowski, but let us not forget that the Patriots won it all in 2016 with Gronkowski mostly absent. That season, replacement TE Martellus Bennet lead the team in TD receptions, James White was second on the team in overall receptions and the lesser-spotted Malcolm Mitchell was fifth, including 5 receptions in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl.

I believe that 2016 season gives us a pretty good blueprint for how this team will be this season on offense, with Benjamin Watson likely putting up big numbers alongside the usual parade of pass-catching backs supporting an ever-more-intriguing wide receiver depth chart. I have total faith that the Patriots will be as creative as ever in how they deploy their set of offensive weapons that may have lost Gronkowski, but long as strong as ever despite that subtraction.

I shan’t bother to go into much analysis on the defensive side of things, as it still feels somewhat futile as Belichick seems to be on another plane when it comes to his defensive gameplans – so player-by-player insight seems to pale into insignificance compared to assuming that the defence will once again be rock-solid.

For me, the biggest potential question mark for the Patriots is the same shadow that has hung over this team for the last half-decade, and that is TB12 – at what point will Tom Brady’s regression come? Tom Brady is at the vanguard of this generation of quarterbacks that continue to defy expectations, but at some point the event horizon will be reached and the Patriots will no longer be able to rely on him. While in theory this should not do significant damage to this team, given their seeming reliance on schem and invention rather than outright skill, in practice, a diminishing Tom Brady would offer a galvanising symbol to the rest of the division that their time may be coming. The myth of Tom Brady is now possibly more important to this team now than his actual play.

No doubt the rest of the AFC East will feel I am perpetuating the narrative obsession with one team in this division, but frankly, until one of the other 3 steps up to take their crown, that is the way it is going to be. From the butt-fumble through to the Dolphins expensive free agent flops and the Bills playing Nathan Peterman through historical incompetence, all of these other teams seem to struggle to get out of the way of themselves, let alone into the way of the Patriots.

But that could be about to change. For the first time in a long time, all 3 teams have possible definite (a deliberate oxymoron) QBs of the future at the helm – Darnold, Allen and Rosen all have the potential to be part of an exciting new generation (along with the likes of Mahomes and Mayfield) who could usher a new set of teams in as the older generation and their respective teams fade.

Given that attrition rate of such QB prospects, at least 1 of these is likely to be out of a job in a year or 2, and none of these teams could be looked at as close to providing a ‘complete’ team to back up whatever their QB ends up becoming.

The Bills are the team that look the most likely to step up, as they have interesting groups of players at all positions, without any of them being truly stand-out. They were pretty damn useless at Special Teams last season, and it is the kind of gut-wrenching losses that poor Special Teams play gives you that can be the difference-maker when up against a New England juggernaut.

The Jets have a really exciting-looking defence that could be even more exciting if Bell shows himself to be worth the investment, but they have essentially nothing in the secondary at the moment so they could end up scoring a lot but losing even more.

The Dolphins are in a full-on rebuild, and while I included Rosen alongside the other 2 QBs that make up the non-Patriot element of this division, he feels like the biggest moonshot. Unfortunately, I fear that he will be an unrealised talent who needed to find the right team coming out of College, and instead landed playing 2 consecutive seasons for teams with no offensive line and barely anything beyond that. So you have my sympathies Josh Rosen.

Ultimately this season is going to play out the same as the majority have done in recent years, with the Patriots showing a new way to beat the same opposition, and the rest of the division flashing promise enough to give their fanbase hope, but not enough to truly threaten. Same again next year I guess.