4. AFC East

Yes, Tom Brady is my top ranked quarterback this year. He missed four games and is still in the top-15 in most statistical categories, and is still likely to win MVP at year’s end. He’s also filmed a great commercial and pretended to be a lead blocker on one Patriots running play, and both made for great television. His greatness, however, is completely negated by the corresponding terribleness that is Ryan Fitzpatrick this year. I won’t even cite any stats for Fitzpatrick’s season, because I’m afraid they might be too upsetting and would require us to put a NSFW tag on this piece. Even worse than Fitzpatrick, however, is the fact that the Jets refuse to try out one of their other young QBs (Bryce Petty or Christian Hackenberg).  What is the point of keeping four quarterbacks on your roster if there is no chance that they will ever even see the field?

The Case For: Abolishing Thursday Night Football

The saving grace for the AFC East is that Ryan Tannehill has been kind of a stud this year. I guess the football world was not lying when it labeled Adam Gase a ‘quarterback whisperer,’ whatever that means. Over Tannehill’s last six games (all wins) he has a completed nearly 68% of his passes, with a 9:1 TD:INT ratio, and a 104.7 QB rating. And Tyrod Taylor makes up for his average passing abilities by being one of the biggest rushing QB threats in the league. He will probably never be a top-10 QB, but he has proven that last year wasn’t a fluke, and so he falls right in that 10-15 range, the meaty part of the curve. So the AFC East can blame Fitzpatrick—if the Jets QB had the season he had in 2015 this year, this division would rank much higher.