We spent the offseason hearing that the AFC South had arrived — not just improved, but arrived, the division other fanbases were supposed to envy. Houston reached the divisional round in January. Jacksonville won the division outright and pushed Buffalo to the wire in the Wild Card round. Two weeks into 2026, the Jaguars, Texans, Titans, and Colts have combined for one win in eight games, and the problem isn’t one team dragging down three fine ones.
(Buffalo, for what it’s worth, went on to play in the AFC Championship. Jacksonville wasn’t wrong to lose to that team. It’s everything since that’s the issue.)
Why Is the AFC South So Bad Two Weeks Into 2026?
Two weeks in, the division is a combined 1-7. Jacksonville is 1-1 after leading for most of a game it eventually lost. Houston, Tennessee, and Indianapolis are all still winless. It’s a jarring reversal for a division that sent two teams to the playoffs a year ago, and neither of them backed into the bracket.
As Ben Solak flagged on X, the math is ugly enough on its own that it doesn’t need much dressing up.
https://x.com/BenjaminSolak/status/2101883108161122694
One team being bad is a Tuesday. Four teams being bad at the same time, with two of them a year removed from being genuinely good, is what makes you go back and check the calendar.
Jacksonville Is the Only Team Not Winless
The Jaguars are the only team in the division that isn’t 0-2, and even that requires some generosity. Jacksonville lost 20-13 to Denver after leading for much of the game, with Trevor Lawrence throwing a costly interception and an offensive line that allowed a 45.2% pressure rate in the second half. A team with a lead getting outplayed for most of a half doesn’t happen on talent alone.
(A three-point loss is at least a loss with dignity. Small comfort, but the Jaguars will take it right now.)
This is the same Jacksonville team that went 13-4 last year, won the AFC South outright, and lost to Buffalo in the Wild Card round by three points. By record, they were one of the better teams in the conference, not a paper tiger that got exposed in the postseason. Whatever is going wrong right now, it isn’t happening to a bad roster.
Houston Was Supposed to Be a Super Bowl Contender
If Jacksonville’s slippage is uncomfortable, Houston’s is alarming. The Texans lost 20-6 to Cincinnati, managing one field goal on four trips to the red zone. David Montgomery and Woody Marks combined for 1.3 yards per carry. C.J. Stroud was sacked four times, and he did it all without Nico Collins, who was out. Stroud held up his end of the deal last season. Right now the operation around him isn’t holding up its end of anything.
Houston finished 12-5 a year ago, beat Pittsburgh in the Wild Card round, and lost to New England in the Divisional round. That’s a team that was one win from the AFC Championship game seven months ago. Four red-zone trips and one field goal isn’t a talent problem. Two games isn’t enough evidence to name what it actually is, but it’s enough to notice it.
What’s Actually Going Wrong in All Four Buildings
Tennessee and Indianapolis are the less surprising pieces of this, but they’re still pieces. The Titans lost 24-20 to Philadelphia, and their defense got after Jalen Hurts all afternoon — Jeffery Simmons alone had seven pressures — without being able to stop a fourth-quarter scoring drive when it mattered most. The Colts lost 33-30 in overtime to Kansas City on a Harrison Butker field goal, despite Jonathan Taylor running for 92 yards and two touchdowns.
Indianapolis’s losing streak is the one number in this piece that doesn’t fit neatly into a “2026 division collapse” story, and it’s worth sitting with anyway. Nine straight losses means some of this predates the season entirely — the Colts were already broken before Week 1 kicked off. The division’s rough start didn’t create that problem. It just failed to interrupt it.
(Losing in overtime to the reigning conference favorite isn’t a red flag by itself. Losing your ninth straight game to get there is.)
Zoom out and the two playoff teams from a year ago share a specific problem, not just a disappointing final score. Jacksonville’s line allowed pressure on 45.2% of second-half dropbacks against Denver. Houston’s line let Cincinnati get to Stroud four times. Two different offensive lines protecting two different quarterbacks produced the same failure. That’s not proof of anything by itself, but it’s a more specific claim than “the AFC South is bad,” and specific problems are the kind that either get fixed fast or don’t get fixed at all.
My read: a single team cratering is noise. You could write four separate articles blaming four different quarterbacks, four different offensive lines, four different red-zone game plans, and each one would be technically true while missing the actual story. Four teams cratering together, including two that were among the best in the conference a year ago, is a signal, even off a two-game sample I’d normally tell you to ignore.
I spent two years compiling research notes for TV analysts who read my work on air without ever mentioning my name. The one thing that job taught me: the confident preseason division narrative and the roster that actually takes the field in September are frequently two different documents. Nobody built “the AFC South is the league’s best division” out of malice. They built it out of a real 2025 that genuinely happened. It just doesn’t mean the 2026 version shows up wearing the same jersey.
Sure, two games is a small sample, and by Thanksgiving this might read like an overreaction to a scheduling quirk. But red-zone execution, offensive line health, and fourth-quarter composure aren’t scheduling problems. Those are things good teams are supposed to have banked from a year ago, and right now nobody in this division has any of it banked. It’s worth tracking through the rest of our NFL coverage as more results come in.
Watch Jacksonville the closest over the next month. They’re the only team here with a full season of recent evidence that the talent is real, which makes their response the best test of whether this is a division-wide funk or four separate accidents that happened to land in the same two weeks. If the Jaguars pull out of it and the other three don’t, this was never a division problem. It was three bad teams and one rough stretch for a good one.
