Each of the teams in the AFC East faces a different situation heading into the 2020 NFL season. The Buffalo Bills are a team on the rise, well-run from top to bottom with a talented roster that’s ready to compete. While the Bills are the projected favorites, the Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, and New York Jets each will aim to compete.
The Patriots, while also run by some of the NFL’s smartest minds, are clinging to the last couple of years they have to compete– with enough talent to make some playoff noise, but far from enough to be considered a stable threat for much longer.
The Dolphins are the team in the opening chapters of a rebuild. Whatever talent they had by the end of 2018 has been traded or cut, ushering in a new era of fresh faces that are a couple of years away from being ready for a playoff push.
The Jets are in the second act of their rebuild, one that hasn’t quite yet gone the way they hoped it would. For their tanking efforts and draft missteps, they find themselves as a team stuck in the middle, a path the Dolphins will hope to avoid.
The crazy thing about these four teams is that– each of their QB1’s capture the essence of what their teams might look like in 2020. Josh Allen of the Bills is the most talented. Cam Newton is the oldest, and looking for another chance at a title after being written off. Tua Tagovailoa is the youngest, the most inexperienced, and the biggest unknown. And Sam Darnold, like the Jets, is about as “eh” as you could ask for.
Four completely different faces of four completely different teams. Let’s look at each of them, and try to see how their 2020 NFL seasons will pan out.