The Patriots have taken care of business so well and made so many marginal teams look so awful this season that you can’t help but wonder:

Why they couldn’t have saved some of those plays for the good teams?

Because if they had, the Pats wouldn’t be sitting on the precipice of an unthinkable position: Winning 11 games yet still missing the playoffs.

It’s not over, of course.

It’s just not looking good.

You should have every confidence in the Pats’ ability to go into Buffalo next week and dispatch the Bills. You should have very little confidence in the 5-10 Jaguars, who will have to go into Baltimore and beat the Ravens for the Pats to have a shot at the final wild card berth. And you should have absolutely no confidence in the Jets, who without Dick Jauron to help them out, fell on their face yesterday in Seattle. Eric Mangini’s pathetic bunch will have to beat the Dolphins, winners in eight of their last nine games, for the Pats to have a chance at the AFC East crown.

All the above action will unfold next Sunday at 1 p.m. (unless Jets-Dolphins is picked as the flex game, certainly a possibility). So be sure to limber up your clicker finger and accept you’ll probably be disappointed at the end of the day. Since the NFL went to its current playoff format in 1990, no 11-5 team has failed to qualify for the postseason. Odds are the Pats will be the first. At least it will be over early.

In the meantime, the Pats embarrassed another opponent ripe for the taking Sunday, squashing the will of the Arizona Cardinals early and then coasting to a 47-7 win at icy Gillette Stadium. You want details? Here’s the only one that matters: The Cardinals had no interest in playing this football game, and the Pats took advantage.

The win should have marked the second time a playoff-bound team came to Foxboro this season and were out-classed, with the first coming in October when the Pats dismantled the Broncos, 41-7. It won’t be a pleasant feeling for Patriots fans watching those teams come the first weekend of January if the Pats remain on the outside looking in.

Then again, the way the AFC was constituted this year, the Pats needed 12 wins – and there were ample opportunities for the Pats to claim that 12th win. As hard as it is to criticize a team that lost the best player in the league yet still won 11 games, it’s even harder not to look back and play a little game of `what if?’

What if the Pats had stopped the Jets on third-and-15 in overtime?

What if David Thomas hadn’t blocked Indianapolis’ Robert Mathis late or Jabar Gaffney had hung on to the ball or Bill Belichick hadn’t lost count of the Colts’ defenders?

Those things were within the Patriots’ control. Now, their postseason fate is beyond their control.

Another question worth asking is whether the Pats’ current three-game winning streak is purely a function of the schedule, or whether it’s a sign they’ve become that proverbial team who no one wants to face in the playoffs.

I’m going with the latter, although I fully acknowledge there aren’t words to describe how pathetic the Cardinals’ effort was yesterday or how badly the Raiders mailed it in last week. It’s just that momentum is a funny thing, and the Patriots have it. And I’ve also seen the Pats play many of the teams they could face in the postseason, and there’s enough evidence to suggest they’d compete with all of them.

As easy as the Pats’ schedule has been at times, there are some other items worth noting. The Pats beat the one opponent on their schedule currently locked into the postseason (the Cardinals), blowing them out. There was another blowout against a Denver team that is a win away from a division title. The Pats can also point to a late November win at the Dolphins, perhaps the hottest team in the AFC right now. And again, it was a victory done in convincing fashion (48-28).

The Pats have also won at the Jets, who are still alive believe it or not, and came within the aforementioned third-and-15 from sweeping the 9-6 New Yorkers. They also came within three points of winning at Indy. And had Moss made those easy plays against Pittsburgh, the Pats would have led by at least 10 points (and by as many as 14) at the intermission, and I still contend that the Steelers would have been a much different team and that would have been a much different game in the second half.

In other words, for the most part, the Pats have competed with the good teams and taken care of the bad ones. That may not be the sign of a great team, but it’s the sign of one that deserves to be taken seriously in the postseason, providing there even is one.

For the vast majority of the NFL, an 11-win season is a success, even at perfect health. An 11-win season earned without your starting quarterback and some of your best players on defense would be considered epic for most of the league.

The expectations are different here in New England, no matter who is on the injury report. And they should be. But that doesn’t change the fact: What the Pats have done this season is pretty good.

It just likely won’t be good enough to keep them playing beyond next week.

Michael Felger can be seen nightly on Comcast Sportsnet and is a regular contributor for WEEI.com. He can be reached at mfelger@weei.com.