First-round bye if:
— Patriots beat Dolphins
— Tennessee Titans lose to Houston Texans
— Buffalo Bills lose to New York Jets
— Kansas City Chiefs lose to Denver Broncos.
(obv not happening)
We win division if:
— Pats beat Dolphins
— Bills lose to Jets (lol)
rest of seeding:
— If the Patriots win the AFC East, they can’t finish any lower than the third seed in the conference due to owning the tiebreaker over the Cincinnati Bengals, who clinched the AFC North with their Week 17 win over the Chiefs.
— New England would fall to the seventh seed if it loses to the Dolphins and both the Raiders (hosting Los Angeles Chargers) and Colts (at Jaguars) win their respective season finales. If that happens, and the Titans and Chiefs both win their final games, the Patriots would visit Kansas City in the AFC wild-card round. Obviously, that would not be an ideal outcome.
— If the season ended today, the fifth-seeded Patriots would be at the fourth-seeded Bills in the first round. Of course, that also is subject to change. One example: If the Bills win next weekend and the Bengals lose, the Patriots instead would travel to Cincinnati in the first round.
— Should the Patriots wind up winning the division but not finishing with the top seed, there are multiple teams they could wind up facing in the first round, depending on what happens in Week 18. These are the non-division clinching teams who still are in postseason contention: