The AFC South has historically been one of the least popular divisions in the NFL for a plethora of reasons, with the main one being the smaller media markets that happen to be in the group.
To make matters worse, there’s also been a ton of irrelevant football that’s been played within the division since its original inception back in 2002.
Rarely do you see all four teams being competitive in the same season. More often than not, there’s always a clear alpha or two in the group while the others are often thinking about the draft by midseason.
And, as was the case for parts of last season, sometimes all four are bad.
For those reasons, teams in the AFC South rarely get the benefit of the doubt and exposure that others do. For example, a great Titans team is never going to get the type of national media coverage that a great Cowboys team will.
Therefore, when the division is coming off a season in which the winner barely finished with an above .500 record, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the division ranked low in Barry Werner’s post-draft rankings for The List Wire.
To add salt to the wound, most people are already skeptical of the division’s ceiling as it is, but now you potentially throw in a bunch of inexperienced quarterbacks and the doubt only gets amplified.
Werner has the AFC South as the sixth-best division in football, only ranking ahead of the NFC North and the NFC South, with his reasons being:
This is tricky because the Jacksonville Jaguars figured to be one of the better teams in the conference, and eventually the league. However, behind Doug Pederson’s group is the Indianapolis Colts, who will go from a carousel of over-the-hill veteran QBs to a likely project in Florida rookie Anthony Richardson. Is anyone sold on Will Levis or is Tennessee banking on a return to health of Ryan Tannehill? Murky waters. The Texans should be better after getting the Nos. 2 and 3 picks in the draft. However, there is a difference between better and competitive.
If all of these new quarterbacks within the division end up hitting, the boring narrative attached to the AFC South could be changing in the very near future.
Unfortunately, that type of development occurring in 2023 is highly unlikely.
