Three weeks into the 2026 NFL season, there seems to be a growing consensus about the Buffalo Bills.
The New England Patriots? Not so much.
With Week 3 officially in the books, I compared the latest NFL power rankings from ESPN, NFL. com, CBS Sports, USA Today and Sports Illustrated. The results couldn’t paint much more different pictures of the two AFC East rivals preparing to meet this weekend in Buffalo.
The Bills are 3-0 and sits atop four of five national power rankings, while this week’s opponent
is apparently anyone’s guess. The Patriots are 1-2 and somehow managed to land everywhere from the middle of the league to nearly dead last.
So, how good are the Patriots? Or, perhaps more appropriately after Sunday, how bad are they? Apparently nobody knows.
Buffalo has a firm grip on No. 1
Here is where the five outlets ranked the Bills entering Week 4:
Four No. 1 rankings and nothing lower than third. That’s a pretty strong consensus for a team that just spent Sunday afternoon repeatedly trying to give a football game away.
Buffalo turned the ball over five times against the Los Angeles Chargers, fell behind 10-0 and looked nothing like the offensive juggernaut we watched over the first two weeks.
And then the Bills won anyway, 24-16.
That appears to have mattered to the rankers. NFL. com’s Nick Shook was the exception, dropping Buffalo one spot from second to third behind the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs. Even his assessment, however, acknowledged what might have been the biggest takeaway from Buffalo’s messiest performance of the young season: The Bills played terribly and still found a way to win.
Across all five rankings, the Bills have an average position of 1.4, ahead of Kansas City at 2.4 and San Francisco at 3.0. Perhaps even more telling is the spread. The difference between Buffalo’s highest and lowest ranking is only two positions.
And then there are the Patriots…
If Buffalo represents consensus, New England represents complete chaos.
Yes, you read that correctly. One outlet thinks New England is the 15th-best team in the NFL. Another thinks they’re 31st. That’s a 16-position spread, the largest disagreement among any of the 32 teams in the five rankings I compared.
The Patriots are apparently either somewhere around league average, one of the worst teams in football or any flavor in between. Pick a number. Somebody probably has them there.
NFL. com represents the most pessimistic end of the spectrum, dropping New England a whopping 13 positions, from number 18 to number 31, following Sunday’s 35-6 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Other rankers aren’t ready to bury them nearly that deeply. USA Today has New England 15th. ESPN has the Patriots 16th. CBS Sports has them 17th.
That’s an enormous difference in how national observers are interpreting the same 1-2 football team.
And perhaps there’s a reason for the uncertainty.
These aren’t the Patriots everyone watched reach the Super Bowl last season. Through three weeks, New England has provided precious little consistency to suggest what exactly the 2026 version is going to become. The glaring reality of the “easiest schedule” in NFL from a year ago now has teeth.
Not the same Bills
Let’s be clear, this isn’t the same Bills team we watched last season either. That’s what makes Sunday’s win feels significant despite just how ugly it was. Falling behind early, turning the ball over five times, and putting together what was easily their worst overall performance of the young season. It isn’t exactly a recipe for victory. In years past, those were the kinds of afternoons when Buffalo had a frustrating tendency to let a lesser opponent, hang around, gain confidence and eventually steal game the Bills had no business losing.
This time they didn’t cave. Great teams aren’t going to play great football every Sunday. Sometimes, the difference its simply whether they can survive themselves when they don’t.
The biggest certainty meets the biggest question mark
That’s what makes Sunday’s AFC East matchup particularly interesting through the lens of these rankings. On one sideline is perhaps the easiest team in football to place: Buffalo. On the other is the hardest: New England.
Buffalo isn’t exactly entering this matchup after playing flawless football. The team has plenty to work on this week. Buffalo escaped those mistakes against an 0-3 Chargers team. Repeating them against a division rival, with everything to prove, regardless of where anyone has that rival ranked, would be asking for trouble.
