What If Sports ranks them 17st (+4)

Yahoo! Sports ranks them 15th (nc):   Will Adalius Thomas’ absence be alarming, or will Bill Belichick just figure out a way to coach around it?

NFL.com ranks 12th:  Ho-hum, another win over Buffalo. But the Jets present a much larger challenge.

ESPN ranks them 7th (+5):  The Patriots keep marching forward. Matt Cassel has established himself as more than a proxy for Tom Brady. He's a legit NFL starter.

Fox Sports ranks them 7th (+3):  Maybe it's time to rename the Coach of the Year trophy the "Bill Belichick award" because this is getting silly. Last week the Patriots lost another Pro Bowl player (LB Adalius Thomas, broken arm) for the season, but still cruised against the Bills.

ProFootball Weekly ranks them 7th (+2): Belichick made up for Indy with well-coached Bills win.

USA Today ranks them 6th (+4):  Matt Cassel, sacked 26 times in his first 6 starts flattened just once in last two games.

The Sporting News ranks them 6th (+4):  They need to have Richard Seymour (five sacks) continue to play as he did Sunday against Buffalo, because the Patriots will miss the versatile Adalius Thomas at linebacker. They also need more from Mike Vrabel, whose only two sacks came in Week 1 after he recorded a career-high 12 1/2 last season.

Dr. Z at SI ranks them 6th (+3):  Hi-yup! And up ye go, me hearties. Climbing three spots at this level is big thunder. But I want to talk about something else, Randy Moss getting assessed 20 G's for saying some of the calls were "iffy." The fine was later rescinded when cooler heads in the league office prevailed, but I've got a theory about all these stupid, criticism fines. They can be traced back to the Ed Hochili incident, further exascer...uh, exacer...exercas...make that heightened by the attention he called to his own screwup. The typical reaction by mindless officialdom. Strike out blindly in all directions.

Peter King at SI ranks them 5th (+2):  Good point by Cris Collinsworth in the NBC viewing room after watching another strong game by the New England quarterback Sunday: "Have you noticed we used to say the Patriots won in spite of Matt Cassel, and now they're winning because of him?''

The Metro ranks them 4th (+3):  BenJarvus Green-Ellis had a reputation of being an outstanding running back in the SEC. It shouldn’t be a huge surprise it’s translated to the NFL.