I wonder which Super Bowl win exactly was aided by the crappy AFC East.
2001 when there were two WC teams in the Division, and they easily won the AFCCG on the road?
2003 when the Pats were 14-2, won the #1 seed on great part by beating Indy on the road, and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place teams in the division had a better record than the same position teams in the North and West and the same record as the ones in the South?
2004 when the Pats got the two seed at 14-2, two games ahead of the three seed, despite the AFC East 2,3 and 4 teams having a better record than the 2,3, and 4 teams in any other AFC Division, and then they went and easily won the AFCCG on the road?
2014 when they earned the #1 seed by destroying two of the other division winners by over 20 points each? I'll admit that this one year the AFC North was particularly tough with the Ravens and Bengals making the playoffs and the Browns at 7-9, and that ended up with the Steelers at #3, but even then the Steelers blew their chance at a bye by losing to the 4-12 Jets, so it's still hard to make Mike's argument here.
2016 when they went 14-2 (two games better than any other team in the Conference) had a Wild Card team in their division, weren't in a division with either of the worst teams in the Conference: the Browns (1-15) or Jags (3-13), and beat the AFC North Champion Steelers on the road in the regular season?
2018 when they won the #2 seed tiebreaker with the Texans because they beat them, also avoided losing a possible tiebreaker to the Colts because they beat them, and beat the #1 seed at home in the regular season and on the road in the playoffs? And lol Texans-Eagles. Does anyone on the planet think the Texans were better than the Patriots?
It's an incredibly lazy argument and he would never let someone get away with this sort of crap if they were arguing against him.