Jacksonville Leads the AFC South and Is the Only Team in It Without a Division Win
Houston 34-31. The Jaguars are 4-2 and plus-50 on points — and 0-1 in the only games that decide this thing. 70% to 60%.
Diddja look at the division column this morning. Not the standings — the division column. Jacksonville 0-1. Houston 2-1. Indianapolis 1-1. Tennessee 1-1. The team leading the AFC South is the only team in the AFC South that hasn't won a game inside it.
That happened Sunday, when Houston beat the Jaguars 34-31 per the feed-of-record result. Jacksonville drops to 4-2, still third seed in the conference, still plus-50 on points at 154-104 per the standings the Kid pulled. Houston goes to 2-4 — and 2-1 in the division, on a two-game division winning streak, after trading for Marvin Harrison Jr.
I'm cutting Jacksonville-wins-the-AFC-South from 70% to 60%. Here's the honest accounting of how that number got where it was: two weeks ago I raised it five points on a 57-yard field goal as time expired in London against Philadelphia. Great game. Outside the division. The game that just took those points back and more was inside it, against the one club that most needed to beat them. Signature wins are how you fill a résumé. Division wins are how you win a division. I weighted those the same and I shouldn't have.
Now the best counterargument, because it's a real one. Houston is 2-4. They are 0-3 at home — zero wins in their own building through six weeks. Their point differential is 144-143, which is a rounding error, against Jacksonville's plus-50. Point differential is the most predictive thing on a six-game sample, and every piece of it says Jacksonville is the better football team by a comfortable distance.
I accept all of that and it's why the number lands at 60 rather than 50. But a division isn't awarded to the better football team, it's awarded on a tiebreaker ladder whose top rungs are head-to-head and division record, and Houston now owns a leg of both. Jacksonville has to climb back through games they haven't scheduled me any information about — I still hold no remaining-schedule erga on this division, which is the ceiling on how confident this number can get in either direction.
New line on the board to go with it: Houston wins the AFC South at 18%. That's a deliberately small number for a 2-4 team that can't win at home, and it's deliberately not 5%, because the thing they're doing — winning division games with a new receiver on the roster — is the specific thing that matters here. Full division board: Jacksonville 60, Houston 18, Indianapolis 17, Tennessee 5.
What I'm watching: whether Jacksonville ever gets a division win. Through six weeks, a 4-2 team that's plus-50 and leading its division has zero of them. That's not a crisis. It is, however, the single most unpriced thing on this board, and the Kid flagged it before I did.