AFC East is NFL's best division through two weeks

BOSTON -- The 2022 NFL season is young. Very young. But through two weeks of the 18-week marathon, the AFC East stands as the best division in football.

While yes, the Buffalo Bills are doing the heaviest lifting in that regard, it's been a four-team effort. The Bills, Dolphins, Patriots and Jets are a combined 5-1 in games that don't involve head-to-head AFC East matchups.

The Bills have, far and away, the most impressive of those victories. They dismantled the Titans on Monday night, by a score of 41-7. And that's after suffocating the defending-champion Rams, 31-10, in Week 1. 

Yet the Bills aren't going it alone.

The Dolphins, in rather spectacular fashion, won their lone out-of-division game, coming back from a 35-14 fourth-quarter deficit to stun the Ravens and win 42-38.

The Patriots' lone loss came within the division, but they're 1-0 against teams outside of the AFC East after beating the Steelers, 17-14, on Sunday in Pittsburgh.

And in perhaps the most surprising development of them all, the Jets have done their part, too, going 1-1 to start the year. After a blowout loss to the Ravens in Week 1, they shocked the Browns -- and everyone else, for that matter -- by scoring 14 points in the final minute and a half of Sunday's game, earning a 31-30 win in Cleveland.

Add it all up, and AFC East teams are 5-1 in games outside the division, good for an .833 winning percentage.

The next-best group in out-of-division games would be the NFC East. The Eagles, Giants, Commanders and Cowboys do have one more win than the AFC East quartet, but they also have one more loss. The NFC East's combined out-of-division record of 6-2 is good for a .750 winning percentage. The worst division thus far is the AFC South, where teams are 0-4 outside of the division. The NFC South (1-3) is the only other division without multiple victories outside the division. The NFC West, NFC North and AFC West all have .500 winning percentages on games outside the division, while the AFC North is behind that group at .333.

The AFC East also has the best point differential in the NFL through two weeks at plus-48 ... though that stat is slightly aided by the Bills' plus-55 mark.

The long-term meaning of this status for the AFC East is ... minimal. But in an AFC where the battle for wild-card spots figures to be extremely fierce, it's a situation that bears watching as the season progresses.