No, the Buffalo Bills -- even on a four-game winning streak -- cannot overlook Sunday's game against the Miami Dolphins. But, for a moment, can we take a peek at what's around the corner for one of the NFL's hottest teams?

If the Bills can take care of business against an inferior 2-4 team in South Florida this weekend, they will return home to New Era Field next week with a 5-2 record, their first five-game winning streak since 2004 and a chance to capture first place in the AFC East at the halfway mark of the season.

The Bills' looming Oct. 30 meeting with the New England Patriots won't be a playoff game, but it would be the one of the biggest football games Buffalo has experienced in a decade or longer.

A Bills win over the Patriots, assuming Buffalo also earns a victory this Sunday in Miami, would improve the Bills' record to 6-2 and also secure their first season sweep of New England since 1999. The Patriots, even if they arrived in Buffalo after a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, would fall to 6-2 with a loss and drop the head-to-head season tiebreaker to Buffalo.

A Bills loss to New England wouldn't be crippling for their playoff hopes, but it would put Buffalo back in familiar territory, chasing the division-leading Patriots into November. Another Tom Brady victory over the Bills, the 26th of his career in 29 meetings, would also call into question whether Buffalo's Week 4 win at Gillette Stadium was a product of an injured rookie quarterback, Jacoby Brissett, starting for the Patriots.

Rarely have the Bills had this sort of opportunity to make noise at this point in a season. The most recent time the Bills finished their first-half schedule at least tied for first place in the AFC East was 2011, when Buffalo was in a three-way tie with New England and the New York Jets at 5-3.

However, it has not been since 1993 -- the Bills' fourth and final Super Bowl season -- that they have stood alone atop the division after eight games. If the Bills win their next two games, they would not only be head and shoulders above the rest of the AFC East for the first time since that season, but their 6-2 record would be the franchise's best start since their 7-1 mark that same year, 1993.

Even if the Bills can't maintain the same pace over the second half of their schedule, their best start in 24 seasons would still be a significant accomplishment for a team that has too often found its postseason hopes washing down the gutter not long after the leaves fall from the trees each autumn.

Yet as much as Bills fans should find appealing the prospect of overtaking the Patriots by Halloween, the Oct. 30 contest will lose some of its luster if Buffalo trips up this Sunday in Hard Rock Stadium.

That's why Rex Ryan, who seems to have adopted a more focused approach during the Bills' ongoing winning streak, wasn't looking past the Dolphins on Monday.

"We have to focus on the job at hand and the opponent in front of us. It’s a who’s who over there [on the Dolphins]," Ryan said. "As a matter of fact, they beat Pittsburgh. So, it’s all about Miami and that's it. The other stuff, [the playoffs], there's no sense in even thinking about that. We're not even close to that."

Get the job done in Miami this weekend and topple Brady the following Sunday, and you can bet the "other stuff" will start to creep into the minds of everyone around a city deprived of a front-running postseason contender for more than two decades.