Teams too often fail to live up to the pre-season hype of the "pundits." Who knows what pitfalls await the Patriots this season. But right now, they're making the hype look valid, especially on offense.

New England packed it in against Buffalo earlier today, after taking a 38-7 lead in the fourth quarter.

Tom Brady took a seat on the bench — the international sign for "this game is over" — with about 8 minutes to play. Soon after, the Patriots ran the ball up the middle on 4th an 7, when they were well inside field goal range (on about the Buffalo 10), refusing to pad their 31-point lead.

Foregoing the field goal was the difference between an offense that's merely good, and one that's on pace to set some new NFL scoring marks (at a very early point in the season, we realize).

We can see sitting the quarterback and eschewing the field goal against a divisional opponent with the game well in control.

But the football historians within us wondered what effect it might have on New England's early assault on history.

For those of you keeping score at home, Brady has 10 TD passes through three games (four today), which puts him on pace for 53 this season. We don't think it will happen, but that's the pace he's on right now, and that would be a new NFL record.

The New England offense, meanwhile, averages a nifty 38.0 PPG, with a clean, easy-to-calculate 38 points in all three games this year.

With another field goal, the one the Patriots passed up on the 4th-and-7 dive, they would have 117 points this season, instead of 114.

What's the significance of 117 points? Well, that would be an average of 39.0 PPG, and that would be on pace for an NFL record. (Again, it's early in the season ... just trying to fill some space here, folks, with interesting data you won't get anywhere else. Ixnay the angry e-mails.)

NFL games to watch Must-see TV Cowboys-Packers, Pats-Steelers just a few ’07 schedule highlights Getty Images

The all-time NFL scoring record is currently held by the 1950 Rams, who averaged 38.83 PPG (466 points in 12 games), behind the performance of two Hall of Fame quarterbacks, Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin.

Of course, that was a different era and the 1950 Rams had an advantage few other teams in history have had: they played four of their 12 games against expansion teams from the old All-America Football Conference, the Baltimore Colts and New York Yanks. The Colts in particular fielded a brutally inept defense and both franchises were so bad that they were out of the league within a year. The Colts returned in 1953, but the Yanks were lost to history.

(You'll see in a future CHFF article that many, many records in NFL history are the result of unusual historic circumstances, such as this scoring record of the 1950 Rams.)

So, comparing an offense of that era to one of today is difficult. Suffice it to say, nobody's ever scored as prolifically as the 1950 Rams.

New England at this point, though, is one pace for the Super Bowl Era scoring mark. Here are the top five offense of the Super Bowl Era. Not so coincidentally, the top offense in the modern NFL had something in common with the 2007 Patriots: a wide receiver named Randy Moss.

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