The 2025 season was an exciting one for the Jacksonville Jaguars. It marked the start of a new era, with the team hiring a new general manager and head coach ahead of the season, and the new era started beautifully in Duval. The team finished the regular season with a 13-4 record, won the AFC South, and suffered a close loss in the first round of the playoffs.
Now, there’s a lot of excitement surrounding the Jags ahead of the 2026 season, but they aren’t the AFC South team with the highest expectations. That would be the Houston Texans, who were 12-5 last season, finishing second in the division. Houston did win one playoff game, but they split the regular season series with Jacksonville.
Still, it’s been the Texans, this offseason, who have been getting the lofty expectations. The latest example of that came in an ESPN piece, where NFL analyst Ben Solak made 10 bold predictions about the season. One of Solak’s bold predictions was that Houston will win the AFC — not just its division, but the entire conference, meaning the Texans will play in the Super Bowl.
Texans predicted to win AFC, giving Jaguars tough competition in the AFC South
The prediction itself isn’t all that problematic. Houston could have played in the Super Bowl this past season if Texans quarterback CJ Stroud didn’t play the worst game of his career at the wrong moment. That’s why it’s reasonable to predict Houston could get to the Super Bowl next season.
However, it’s fair for Jaguars fans to ask why Houston garners so much more respect than Jacksonville, when both teams’ 2025 seasons were about equal. The simple answer is that the Texans have been to the Divisional round the last three years, while the Jaguars just returned to the playoffs after a 4-13 season the year prior.
A more layered answer is that Houston has an identity that people can cling on to, while not everyone is sold on, or even knows, Jacksonville’s identity yet. Solak emphasized that the Texans' defense should once again be elite, so all Houston really needs is a productive run game and for Stroud to be competent.
The Jaguars haven’t established a dependable identity like Houston’s defense yet. It could be Jacksonville’s offense, which posted 27.9 points per game under offensive-minded head coach Liam Coen, but the unit will have to put up another year of production to really be respected.
If that happens, and the Jaguars defense also improves, it could be Jacksonville winning the AFC.
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