Jacksonville Jaguars
Houston and Indianapolis have experienced major changes in the last two weeks that has completely changed the outlook of this division. I was feeling pretty good about Indianapolis and while I think Jacoby Brissett will be fine, I like Jacksonville more overall. This team is stacked with talent and now that they have Nick Foles at QB instead of Blake Bortles they have a chance to really live up to their potential. Foles just has to run the offense and not screw it up. They really need Leonard Fournette to be an effective offensive player to really take this team to another level. At WR Marqise Lee returns from injury but it’s really Dede Westbrook who looks like a breakout star. The offensive line has potential to be really good if Cam Robinson stays healthy at LT and if either Cedric Ogbuehi or Jawaan Taylor can lock down the RT position. New offensive coordinator John DeFilippo has worked with Foles before so the transition shouldn’t be too hard. Foles and Fournette are the keys to this offense.
The defense was excellent two years ago and while it wasn’t quite as good last year it was still pretty good. I think they have a chance to be elite once again. The defensive line has Yannick Ngakoue and Calais Campbell at DE and the team somehow lucked into Josh Allen with the #7 pick in the draft. Allen will be a pass rushing specialist and these three will wreak havoc on opposing offenses. DT Marcel Dareus and Abry Jones are solid in the middle. At LB Myles Jack is excellent in the middle and while rookie Quincy Williams and Leon Jacobs aren’t household names, they should be fine. CB Jalen Ramsey can be one of the best in the NFL and his running mate AJ Bouye is one of the best #2 CBs in the NFL. SS Ronnie Harrison stepped up last year and he should be good again.
Head coach Doug Marrone is not really a guy people get excited about but he’s a steady presence and has brought stability to the sidelines. Defensive coordinator Todd Wash is one of the more underappreciated coordinators in the league. He has done a fantastic job and he knows how to best use his personnel, I’m excited to see what he can do with Josh Allen. The offense is where the problems have been and while John DeFilippo didn’t have a good run last year in Minnesota, he got fired in the middle of the year, he’s actually a pretty good offensive mind. I think his vision and Marrone’s vision for the offense are more compatible than DeFilippo’s was with Mike Zimmer with the Vikings. DeFilippo’s past with Nick Foles should also come in handy. I think Jacksonville takes advantage of the uncertainty in Houston and Indianapolis and pulls out the division title.
Houston Texans
Many people are not on board with the trades the Texans made at the end of the preseason and while they definitely paid handsomely for their acquisitions of Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills and didn’t get a lot for Jadeveon Clowney I’m okay with what it does for them right now. The Texans offense is built around Deshaun Watson and he barely made it out of last season alive. The offensive line has been horrible and they haven’t been good at drafting OTs since the days of Duane Brown. Tunsil is one of the better LTs in football and he’s still only 25 years old. He can grow with Watson and secure his blindside for the foreseeable future. They also add WR Kenny Stills to play opposite DeAndre Hopkins and to me that’s a good addition. Will Fuller and Keke Coutee haven’t stayed healthy and Stills is a veteran presence that adds consistency to take some pressure off of Hopkins. They lost RB Lamar Miller and they are looking at using a combination of Duke Johnson and Carlos Hyde, two guys they traded for during the preseason. They are essentially devoid of anyone of significance at TE. The offensive line got a huge upgrade with Tunsil but it does beg the question of what they were thinking drafting Tytus Howard in the first-round. Howard was a poor choice at that point and that seems clear already. The line will be better with a healthy Nick Martin at center and Seantrel Henderson at RT. Watson will carry the offense once again, hopefully he won’t be running for his life.
The defense takes a hit with the trade of OLB Jadeveon Clowney but I’m actually okay with the choice the Texans are making. I think they could have gotten more out of the Clowney trade, Barkevious Mingo is not a worthwhile piece, but I wouldn’t have paid Clowney what he wants either. Clowney wants to be paid like he’s Khalil Mack or Von Miller and he simply doesn’t affect the game the way those two do. He’s a good all-around OLB but he isn’t an elite pass rusher. I would rather spend the money on Tunsil. This does mean that the team is counting that much more on an aging JJ Watt and a not-as-young-as-he-used-to-be Whitney Mercilus. On the d-line, DT DJ Reader holds his own and they can hope rookie Charles Omenihu outplays his draft position. At ILB they are pretty good with Zach Cunningham and Bernardrick McKinney. Mercilus needs some help at OLB and I would be shocked if it came in the form of Barkevious Mingo. At CB Jonathan Joseph makes Watt look like a spring chicken but he is still effective. Newly signed Bradley Roby adds youth but he’s inconsistent. S Justin Reid played well as a rookie last year and Tayshaun Gipson should be a decent veteran presence.
The Texans fired their GM after the draft and they haven’t replaced him and they don’t plan to do so. For now, it’s GM-by-committee and it seems like Bill O’Brien is leading that committee. It is probably why the team looks like they got fleeced in their two trades. Everything is on O’Brien now and he knows he is betting big on Deshaun Watson. The Texans are a likely playoff team but they have a few too many holes on defense, an unproven offensive line, and a RB committee that basically got to the team yesterday. That’s a lot to put on the shoulders of Watson and DeAndre Hopkins. The Texans should be good but they are probably not going to be great.
Indianapolis Colts
Andrew Luck retired. The Colts season was defined before it ever got started when Andrew Luck had had enough of his injuries and his rehab and walked away from the game at 29. I like Jacoby Brissett and the team around him now is far better than the one he led two years ago when Luck sat out with a shoulder injury. However, Luck was a special talent who had the ability to raise the play of the guys around him and make decent players good and good players great. The team was built around Luck’s greatness and now that’s gone. The team won’t fall off a cliff like they did when Peyton Manning was lost for a season because Jacoby Brissett isn’t Curtis Painter but he isn’t Andrew Luck either. The team will have to rely more heavily on RB Marlon Mack. Mack had a good year once returned from injury at the start of last year. TY Hilton has always had a fantastic connection with Luck and now he has to establish a new one with Brissett. Hilton is a #1 WR and they need him to play like it. The team signed Devin Funchess to bring a bigger physical presence to the WR spot and drafted Parris Campbell to add another speed element. The TE spot is well manned by Jack Doyle and TD machine Eric Ebron. Ebron will drop off some for sure but he’s still a threat. The offensive line made huge strides last season. LT Anthony Costanzo, LG Quenton Nelson and C Ryan Kelly are very good. RT Braden Smith played pretty well as a rookie and the unit should be stable.
This defense was greater than the sum of its parts. That is a testament to defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus and dynamic LB Darius Leonard. Leonard was an All-Pro as a rookie and that’s not easy to do. The team will rely on steady veteran Jabaal Sheard and new addition Justin Houston to rush the passer at DE. Houston was an OLB in Kansas City but the defense in Indy is a little different. Danico Autry and Margus Hunt man the middle at DT. Leonard plays the weakside while Anthony Walker mans the middle and Matt Adams plays the strongside at LB. Walker is an underrated MLB but it’s understandable when Leonard takes all the attention. Pierre Desir and Kenny Moore were far better than expected at CB while Malik Hooker and Clayton Geathers held down the safety spots. Not a lot of household names on this defense but like I said they are greater than the sum of their parts. This is really a solid unit with only one true standout player. As long as Eberflus can get the same cohesiveness out of this group as he did last year, they should be fine.
Frank Reich wasn’t the first choice to be the head coach of the Colts last season but he was the right choice. Now Reich gets to work his magic with a backup QB again, he did it with Nick Foles in Philadelphia, this time will be just as difficult. There is a lot of pressure on Brissett to not collapse under the weight of the loss of Luck but he’s stepped in before. The team is better than they were two years ago when Luck missed the season and this is a completely new coaching staff so while I don’t think they are a playoff team; I don’t think they completely collapse either.
Tennessee Titans
The entire Titans franchise rests on the shoulders of Marcus Mariota. That’s a lot to put on the guy but they didn’t make him the #2 overall pick to be a middling NFL player. Just like Jameis Winston in Tampa Bay it’s sink or swim time for Mariota. He’s in his fifth year and the team has to decide if he’s worth further investment or if they need to look for a new QB. I’ve never been a big Mariota fan, he’s a better athlete than he is a QB, this year he has no excuse for failure because he has talent around him. At RB the team has work horse Derrick Henry and third-down back Dion Lewis. At WR there is potential #1 target Corey Davis, a strong second receiver in Tajee Sharpe and new slot receiver Adam Humphries. Delanie Walker returns at TE and Jonnu Smith can’t be terrible forever. The offensive line is missing LT Taylor Lewan for the first month of the season due to suspension but if they can’t overcome that it’s because Mariota just isn’t quite good enough to do so. The rest of the line is fine.
Mike Vrabel brought in long-time defensive coach Dean Pees to be the defensive coordinator last year and it made a difference. This year they are making some personnel changes to bring the defense up a notch. The team returns Da’Quan Jones and Jurrell Casey on the line and they signed Brent Urban from Baltimore, a guy Pees knows well. At LB they have Rashaan Evans, Jayon Brown and Wesley Woodyard to rotate on the inside, it’s the OLB that will change. Gone are veterans Brian Orakpo and Derrick Morgan and in their place are even more veteran Cameron Wake and youngster Harold Landry. The team is hoping to get one more year out of Wake whom they signed from Miami and they hope Landry can be a full-time player this year. Logan Ryan, Malcolm Butler and Adoree’ Jackson return at CB. Ryan and Butler can be fine but can also struggle, Jackson is a pretty good nickel. Kevin Byard has become one of the better free safeties in football while Kenny Vaccaro is steady at strong safety. The guy to watch out for is rookie Amani Hooker. He’s a multi-talented safety who can play some nickel and isn’t afraid to mix it up as a tackler.
The Titans have good, solid talent all around but they don’t have a lot of dynamic playmakers. They need Mariota to be that guy but he just isn’t consistent enough. Perhaps, if he were a more consistent thrower Corey Davis would live up to his immense talent at WR. RB Derrick Henry is an unremarkable work horse and Dion Lewis isn’t quite as dynamic as he was in his Patriot days, then again who ever is? On defense they need Jurrell Casey to stand out and they need one of the OLB to step up. I think they are going to find Hooker can be a playmaker in the backend but that might not be enough. I think the Titans finish last in the division and I think they go shopping for a new QB next season, either in the draft or in a trade.
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