FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — This is a tenuous position the New England Patriots have. Just ask the Seattle Seahawks, Cincinnati Bengals, San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos.

A little more than midway through the 2014 season, the list of teams anointed at some point as the best in the NFL is long. It is also a list of teams that failed to hold the momentum and impressive play that led them to be placed in that irrelevant and short-lived spot upon a pedestal.

With Sunday’s 43-21 surprisingly decisive victory over the Broncos (6-2) at Gillette Stadium, the New England Patriots (7-2) head into the team’s Week 10 bye considered among the best the NFL has to offer in the first week of November.

Not only is that reputation a far cry from what people were saying about the Tom Brady-led squad after a Week 4 blowout Monday night loss in Kansas City, it also is a long ways from anything that will resemble meaningful hierarchy in either the AFC or the NFL come January and February.

The simple fact is that the AFC East-leading Patriots have the best record in the conference with seven games to play and a clear shot at securing the top seed for the postseason. That would certainly pave a potentially smooth road to the team’s fourth straight AFC title game.

But as the previous supposed “best in football” teams showed, that title can be fleeting. After the bye week the Patriots travel to Indy, host Detroit and then go on the road for an extended trip that will see the team play on Sunday night in Green Bay and head right to San Diego for a week of West Coast work prior to the team’s Sunday afternoon battle.

Once upon a time the current six-game stretch of schedule was seen as a brutal test for the Patriots, on that might be considered a victory with a 3-3 mark or even a palatable 2-4 take. But after blowouts of the Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos in Foxborough, expectations for the short and long term have changed for fans and the media.

But those in the New England locker room head into the bye and the last half of the season knowing nothing has been accomplished.

“We have a long way to go. Seven wins isn’t going to get anything in this league,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said after dismissing Denver. “We’re going to have to do a lot more than that. I think we can still do better at some things. Hopefully we’ll be able to work on those and improve them.”

That mentality — more than just coach speak — is why the Patriots generally improve as a season goes on and play their best football in November and December.

Having a leader like Brady in lockstep with that approach is part of why Belichick and Brady are the most successful coach/QB tandem in NFL history.

“I thought we did some good things. I thought we left a lot of points out there,” Brady said after his fourth game in the last five weeks with 37 or more points. “It was a great win, but we’ll be back at work tomorrow trying to figure out how to get better going into the bye week and to try to make some improvements because we’ve got a tough stretch coming up.”

That stretch certainly looks far less difficult these days. In the last five games Brady had 18 touchdowns and one interception, New England is averaging just more than 40 points a game in that span. Rob Gronkowski is once again proving himself arguable the most dominant force in the game. Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner are bringing together a pass defense the way they were expected to when they were signed as free agents this spring.

Right now, the Patriots may be the best team in football. But it’s also as meaningless as that, coming three months before a true NFL king will be crowned.

New England is dominant these days. It is also a team hungry to get better.

“We’re just taking every week and just playing as hard as we can, and just prepping, and practicing as hard as we can,” Gronkowski said. “We’re not measuring ourselves where we are, we’re just measuring ourselves as a team; as sticking together, and staying together, and whatever happens, stick together, and keep practicing hard and keep playing hard.”

And Belichick certainly sounds like a coach focused on making the best of the bye week.

“We could use a month if we had it,” Belichick said. “There are a lot of things we need to work on. I think there’s a lot of, there’s obviously a huge challenge coming up with the Colts, playing in Indy and playing a great football team. They have a good team. But just in general, there are so many things that we need to improve on fundamentally, scheme-wise, in our different units, three, four guys working together on different things. There are a lot of areas that we need to address and will address.”