You can also have no lock screen password or a trivial pattern. Not everybody requires the same level of safety. I'm not expecting my phone to be safe against physical access at all (although it probably is).
A trivial pattern is safer than NFC, because it's more difficult to record surreptitiously. Getting a visual recording of your hand is more difficult than cloning your ring's NFC tag data.
No lock screen password is safer than NFC, because it's more difficult to unlock your phone. Getting a physical hand to unlock your phone is more difficult than transmitting an NFC unlock signal to it from a distance.
