How Sunday’s results impacted idle Patriots’ pursuit of No. 1 seed, AFC East

The Broncos are 7-2 vs. AFC opponents and the Patriots are 6-2.

That’s the tie-breaker that dropped the Patriots out of the No. 1 seed position in the AFC playoff picture after Sunday’s game.

Still with four weeks to play, that race could go down to the wire.

But the Patriots can clinch some things with a win on Sunday. If they beat the Bills, they’d clinch:

The AFC East title and with it at least a first-round home game
No worse than the No. 3 seed. Division winners get the top four seeds and the AFC North winner can’t win more than 11 games.

Where things stand in race for the AFC’s No. 1 seed:

AFC Top seed

	W	L	T	Pct	PF	PA
Denver	11	2	0	.846	308	235
New England	11	2	0	.846	351	241

With the Patriots idle, the Broncos (11-2) took care of business against the Raiders to pull back ahead of the Patriots, with the help of a tie-breaker.

Still, beginning with Sunday’s game against Green Bay, the Broncos have a brutal finishing schedule with the Chargers, Chiefs and Jaguars looming.

The Patriots’ remaining schedule

Dec. 14 vs. Buffalo
Dec. 21 at Baltimore
Dec. 28 at NY Jets
Jan. 4 vs Miami

The Broncos’ remaining schedule:

Dec. 14 vs Green Bay
Dec. 21 vs Jacksonville
Dec. 25 at Kansas City
Jan. 4 vs LA Chargers

Where things stand in race for AFC East title:

Buffalo’s win snowy come-from-behind win over Cincinnati, kept them in the race. But they’ll need to beat New England head-to-head on Sunday and get a lot of help to win the division.