The recent struggles for the New England Patriots can be mostly attributed to the personnel issues that have lingered for years. However, a case could also be made that another reason for those struggles has been due to the ridiculous strength of schedule.
Over the last two seasons, the Patriots have had arguably the toughest regular season schedules in the NFL. It's never a good sign when a team is projected to have more blowout losses than wins, which was consistently becoming the problem for New England.
However, that isn't the case this season with the team finally receiving a blessing from the NFL scheduling gods.