The cupcake portion of the New England Patriots’ schedule may not turn out to be so easy, with the Miami Dolphins resurgence in their last four games and the Denver Broncos now 6-5 behind a rock-solid defense and Tim Tebow (this guy just doesn’t know how to lose). However, these past two weeks have certainly been a nice vacation for the Pats, playing the lowly Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Chiefs actually managed to lead the game in Foxborough last Monday night by three. Then the Pats finally finished their warm-ups and scored 34 unanswered points in an absolute tour de force that exposed Tyler Palko as the career backup that he is and showed that Scott Pioli, Romeo Crenel and the Kansas City Baby Patriots still have a long way to go before they can compete with their big brother from New England.

Tom Brady threw for an efficient 234 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Rob Gronkowski was strong again, catching both of Brady’s scoring passes. The Chiefs did manage to hold him to only 96 yards receiving, although he did it on just four catches. BenJarvus Green-Ellis was solid in helping to finish out the game in the second half, finishing with 81 yards on 20 carries.

Credit goes to Crenel for being able to slow down the prolific Brady-to-Gronk pairing in the first half. Watching him coach a mediocre team like that makes me miss the good ol’ days when he and Belichick were working together—it just wasn’t fair for opposing offenses. This past week was just a complete joke of a football game. The Eagles (win something, then I’ll respect your so-called “Dream Team”) have proven once again that games are not won on paper. That squad has the most athletic talent in the NFL, but it is not a team. Starting their backup quarterback Vince Young, the Eagles were fighting for their (very slim) playoff lives.

The Pats decided to be nice and spot the Eagles 10 points in the first quarter before they repeated their performance from the previous week, outscoring Philly 38-3 from then on, save for one garbage-time TD. Tom Brady absolutely abused an Eagles secondary that, coming into the year, was touted as the most talented in the league. Touchdown Tom threw for 361 yards and three TDs. The Pats had two players with over 100 yards receiving in this game—Deion Branch and Wes Welker—who had 125 and 115 yards, respectively. If the NFL had an award for best receiver under six feet tall, Welker, who had two of Brady’s TDs, would win it every year. No one is talking about the fact that he is on pace to break the NFL record for receiving yards in a season and is arguably the best receiver in the league despite not having the spectacular, leaping end-zone catches that other receivers make. Gronk was unusually quiet, with just one TD and 59 yards, but it just goes to show that you can try to take one threat away, but the Pats will burn you with someone else.

The defense allowed 400 yards passing to Young, but it really didn’t seem like it. They got some help from Young, who missed some very easy throws, and from DeSean Jackson, who dropped a sure TD, but overall I was never very worried once the Pats started scoring. One positive with which most people will agree is that this defense can definitely stop the run. LeSean McCoy came into the game as the leading rusher in the NFL and finished with only 31 yards on 10 carries. Yes, that was partly due to the fact that the Eagles were playing from behind for the entire second half, but one very telling stat is this: in the first half (which was close, Philly led 10-7 after one quarter), Philly, as a team, had 44 rushing yards. In a period of the game where both teams were relatively even (before the Pats began to pull away towards the end of the second quarter) the Eagles, the top-ranked rushing team in the NFL, had mustered only 44 yards. The defense is doing its job well enough that maybe this team can contend for the Super Bowl.

Next week, the Pats welcome the winless Indianapolis Colts to Foxborough for a game that should be, well, fun to watch for Pats fans. Remember the days when this was the game of the year every year? Not this time. The Pats should walk over the Colts (who look more and more like they are trying to Suck for Luck—Andrew Luck, that is) for their ninth win of the season.