AFC East
Division in the NFL's American Football Conference
The American Football Conference – Eastern Division or AFC East is one of the four divisions of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). There are currently four teams that reside in the division: the Buffalo Bills, the Miami Dolphins, the New England Patriots, and the New York Jets. All four members of the AFC East were previously members of the Eastern Division of the American Football League (AFL).
Both perfect regular seasons in professional football since the adoption of a 14-game schedule in the inaugural AFL season and by the NFL in 1961 have been achieved by teams in this division — the 1972 Dolphins, who completed the only perfect season in professional football at 17–0, and the 2007 Patriots, who finished 18–1 after losing Super Bowl XLII. Since the division's establishment in 1960, with the creation of the AFL, the division has been represented in 22 Super Bowls and won 11 of them. The most recent appearance in the Super Bowl by an AFC East team was the Patriots loss in Super Bowl LX. Among the current teams, they have a total of nine Super Bowl titles: six for the Patriots, two for the Dolphins, and one for the Jets.
The current champions of the AFC East are the New England Patriots. Previously, the Patriots had won eleven consecutively from 2009 through 2019. The Patriots have won the most AFL/AFC East titles, at 23; followed by the Bills at 15 (who also had the best record in the East during the strike shortened 1982 season when divisions were scrapped for a seeded playoffs) and the Dolphins at 13. The Jets have won four. Two teams formerly in the division combined for ten AFL/AFC East titles — the Houston Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans) won four division titles (and the 1960 and 1961 AFL titles) during the AFL era while the Baltimore–Indianapolis Colts won six division titles (and Super Bowl V) in the 32 seasons they were in the division.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “AFC East” is division in the NFL's American Football Conference. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through East, Division and NFL's, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q291831. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1972, 2007 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “AFC East” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.