Texans vs Jaguars – Part 2 is coming!

If you are a football fan of the Houston Texans or the Jacksonville Jaguars at this point of the 2021 NFL season, the best thing your team must accomplish is not winning another football game.

That’s right!

Both the Texans and Jaguars are tied at 2-10 and running neck and neck for having the worst record in the NFL this season.   Yes, I am aware that the Detroit Lions are 1-10-1 and have a one-half game lead in the race for the first pick in next year’s NFL draft.

In defense of the Detroit Lions, they are on a definite upswing and competing hard against their opponents.  Last week, Detroit won their first game (on the game’s last play against Minnesota).  In their prior three games, the Lions lost by two points to Chicago (16-14), three points to Cleveland (13-10) and tied the Pittsburgh Steelers (16-16).   They may not score a lot of points, but Detroit is giving it their best shot late in the season.

For AFC South division rivals Houston and Jacksonville, the equally inept 2-10 teams are putting on a clinic on how to implode a football franchise.   By being division rivals, the Texans and Jags must play each other twice every season.  Houston took Game #1 at home with a 37-21 win.

A week from now, a very important rematch will be held in Jacksonville.  The ramifications of winning or losing this one game could be significant.  The only thing that fans of these two moribund franchises have to root for is receiving a higher first round choice in the NFL draft next spring.

It is imperative that each team must focus on doing what they do best – losing.

For Houston, the team continues to write checks to pay their $40 million/year All-Pro quarterback, Deshaun Watson, as he remains inactive this season following a busload of sexual assault or harassment charges made by 22 different women.  According to a report this week, prosecutors are expected to bring this case before a Grand Jury by January, 2022.

That hasn’t stopped the Texans from trying to trade their talented quarterback to other teams over the past several months.  Rumors persisted that either Carolina or Miami were going to make a deal with the Texans for Deshaun Watson.  With so much legal baggage hovering over Watson’s future (on the field or in jail), it appears that neither of those teams wants to make a move without seeing what the justice system will do.

The Houston Texans brought in veteran back-up quarterback Tyrod Taylor in an attempt to give the club a chance, but Taylor has been injured frequently behind Houston’s porous offensive line.  Rookie third string quarterback Davis Mills (from Stanford) was advised this week that he will be the team’s starting quarterback for the remainder of the regular season.  With so many holes to fill on the Texans’ roster, it appears that the team will give Mills a chance to prove his worth as he is the team’s youngest body still capable of running for his life every game (at least for now) .

The Texans are wrapping up an impressively bad three game home stand Sunday after losing to the 3-9 New York Jets 21-14 two weeks ago and being skunked 31-0 at home by 7-6 Indianapolis one week ago.

The Texans’ are losing due to a dearth of talent on the field caused by years of poor decisions by the team’s executive management.

Meanwhile, the Jacksonville Jaguars are losing with (on the surface) a little better talent on the field but years of poor decisions by the team’s executive management.

I believe that we are noticing a trend!

Just four years ago, Jacksonville was playing in New England for the AFC Championship against Tom Brady and the Patriots after going 10-6 in the regular season in 2017.

Since then, the Jaguars have gone 5-11, 6-10, and 1-15 through the 2020 season.  This team has literally blown all four tires since their magical 2017 season.

After drafting LSU running back Leonard Fournette in the first round in 2017, the running back rushed for more than 1,000 yards in both his rookie and third years with J-ville.   After his third season with the team, the Jaguars opted to waive Fournette.  He was quickly signed by another Florida-based team and would win a Super Bowl ring with last season’s NFL champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Leonard Fournette was the lucky one!

In an effort to spark his football team, Jacksonville’s billionaire team owner Shahid Khan hired former college head coach (Ohio State, Florida, and Utah) Urban Meyer to lead the team beginning this season.  Khan, who also is involved with upstart professional wrestling competitor All Elite Wrestling, reportedly is paying Meyer an incredible $12 million per season to coach his football team.

Urban Meyer is one of just three coaches who have won college football national championships at two universities – Florida and Ohio State.  The other two coaches are Pop Warner (Pitt and Stanford) and some guy named Nick Saban (LSU and Alabama).

Coaching in the NFL is another matter.  For the most accomplished coach of his time, Nick Saban only lasted two seasons with the Miami Dolphins before returning to the college game at Alabama.  It isn’t easy trying to coach grown men earning millions of dollars every season.  Saban smartly folded his cards and moved on.

Urban Meyer had great success at the University of Florida and led the team to the 2008 national championship.  After he took the head coaching job at Jacksonville this year, the former Gators’ head coach bought a house down the street from the most famous player from that year’s national championship team, Tim Tebow.

Within a few months, former NFL quarterback and minor-league player Tebow was signed to a one-year contract with Jacksonville in a possible final comeback attempt as a tight end.  He would be cut during the summer.  In retrospect, Tebow was lucky to have been dropped early.

In less than one season as head coach with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, Urban Meyer has already lost more games this season (10 and counting) than he did during seven full seasons at his final college coaching job at Ohio State (83-9).  It is understandable that Urban Meyer would be quite frustrated by this point in the season.

According to reports over this weekend, the players in Jacksonville are now on the verge of mutiny with their hard-nosed coach, too.  This weekend, the media drums are beating that Urban Meyer has been berating his assistant coaches and calling them “losers” as the frustration with a 2-10 first season mounts.  The reports also suggest that the locker room has become toxic as even the most mild-mannered athletes are getting tired of their coach’s tirades.

In Meyer’s defense, remember that this same Jacksonville football team went 1-15 last season while Urban Meyer was doing a college football kickoff show for Fox Sports.  He didn’t draft any of last year’s players, but his goal this year job in Jacksonville is to field a winning football team.

Unlike college football where the head coach recruits high school athletes that best fit his personal style and program, most NFL teams draft the most talented college players available at the moment of each selection.  Consideration is given to each player’s personality matching well with the coaching staff, but the player’s perceived football talent is generally considered more important.

Urban Meyer – the college football coach – could tell high school athletes that playing for his program would help them develop into NFL prospects.

Urban Meyer – the NFL football coach – can only light a fire so far to get well-paid professional athletes to buy into his own “Winning is everything” mentality.  Winning a Super Bowl ring is quite important to most players, but players’ goals become different once they start earning a big paycheck.

The Jacksonville Jaguars will see a big roster change this offseason if Urban Meyer remains the coach.  If Meyer is fired after just one season, the next coach in Jacksonville will inherit a team of underachievers who already know that they can run roughshod over the next coaching victim.

Ah, yes.  These are amusing times for fans of the Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars.

For once, I am actually looking forward to seeing watching these two teams play in their final (and most important) match-up next weekend in Jacksonville.

The stakes are high and so is the drama!