“Never interrupt your enemy­ when he is making a mistake.’’

- Napoleon Bonaparte

DENVER — Here we are. Midseason. The Patriots are coming off their bye week, and everything is teed up for another Super Bowl run.

Despite all the stuff that has happened to the Patriots, they have the best record in the AFC (6-2, tied with Pittsburgh, but who ever worries about them?) and the best path to Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis.

Once again, while the Patriots were not playing, everything that could possibly help them is what happened. The Chiefs lost to the Cowboys. The Bills lost to the Jets. The Dolphins lost to the Raiders. The Ravens lost to the Titans. The Texans lost their young star quarterback. Green Bay gave up on tight end Martellus Bennett, who was quickly snapped up by the Patriots.

Amazing.

Little Tomato Cans sitting in a row. They all fall down.

If the Patriots had another one or two bye weeks they could probably clinch the AFC East and the conference championship without even playing a down.

New England’s season strategy is the same as its game-day strategy: stay the course and wait for the other guys to screw things up. It works every time.

Bill Belichick is a great strategist in the image of Napoleon and ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, who famously said, “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.’’

The strategy worked against Pete Carroll in Super Bowl XLIX and it worked last year against Dan Quinn. It works every game day as the Patriots wait for the other guy to muff a punt, then run into his own end zone to be tackled. It works on New England’s bye weeks in chess-like fashion.

I suggest the slogans of Napoleon and Sun Tzu be stenciled on T-shirts and sold at the Gillette Stadium Pro Shop. “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’’ is as Patriot-like as “Do Your Job’’ or “No Days off.’’

And now as the Patriots walk into their personal chamber of horrors — the one place where they traditionally have trouble — and they are facing a suddenly terrible Denver team that has lost four straight games, including last week’s 51-23 beatdown at the hands of the Eagles. In addition, the Broncos have another once of those ’fraidy-cat coaches who no doubt will lose all football acumen at the mere sight of Belichick and Tom Brady on Sunday.

So there. A game that looked like it would be hard when the schedule came out is not going to be hard (just like next weekend’s trip to Mexico City to play the once-formidable, now 4-5 Raiders). The Patriots are 7½-point favorites this weekend, which makes them the most-favored visiting team in Denver in 20 years.

The Patriots’ status as prohibitive favorites is amazing when you look at the Brady-Belichick record in Denver. Brady is 3-7 at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. Including the playoffs, he has lost six of his last eight games here. He is 1-3 as a playoff quarterback in Denver.

No other venue comes close for Our Tom. Brady threw four interceptions here in his fifth career start back in 2001. After a 10-0 start as a playoff quarterback, Brady suffered his first postseason loss here in 2006 when Champ Bailey intercepted him in the end zone and ran 103 yards. In 2009, Josh McDaniels’s Broncos beat Brady’s Patriots here, 20-17 in overtime. The Patriots lost twice here in the 2015 season, including the AFC Championship game when Brady was sacked four times and hit another 20 times as he lost his third straight AFC title game against a Peyton Manning-led team.

Why all this trouble at Mile High?

“I think they’ve had good teams,’’ Brady explained this past week.

Correct. But this year the Broncos are not a good team. And they got worse during New England’s bye week. The Broncos have lost their last four games by an average score of 31-13. The aggregate score in the first quarters of those four games is 41-3. That includes a lopsided loss to the moribund New York football Giants.

The two most important people in any professional football operation are the quarterback and the coach.

So let’s have a look at the matchups for our Sunday Night Special:

QB: Tom Brady vs. Brock Osweiler.

Seriously? Brady is the GOAT, the Greatest Of All Time. Osweiler is just an overpaid goat. “He’s tall, he’s got a strong arm’’ . . . and he’s terrible. This is the man the Texans signed to a four-year, $72 million ($37 million guaranteed) contract, then traded to the Browns. The winless Browns released Osweiler before he ever played a game for them. Now down-and-out Denver is giving him a second chance in the place where it all began for him. His return start last week was a disaster.

Head coach: Bill Belichick vs. Vance Joseph.

With all due respect to Joseph, this is Albert Einstein vs. Einstein Bagels. It is Alabama vs. UMass in a football game. It is me driving the lane against Karl-Anthony Towns. You get the point. Joseph no doubt someday can be a great NFL coach, but at this hour he is a guy with eight games of head coaching experience who learned at the altars of Gary Kubiak and Marvin Lewis, two guys who cower in the presence of Belichick. Our Bill, meanwhile? He’s attempting to win his 270th game as an NFL head coach, which would tie him with Tom Landry for third on the all-time list.

No contest. Just stand back and wait for the Broncos to beat themselves.

We’re on to Mexico City.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @dan_shaughnessy.