A lot is on the line Sunday at NRG Stadium. The winner of a Week 12 game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans will be first place in the AFC South when December begins.
For the Jaguars, the divisional matchup is also a chance to right an earlier wrong. A 37-17 loss to the Texans at EverBank Stadium in September doesn’t sit well.
“They came in and handled their business here on our home turf,” Jaguars tight end Evan Engram said this week. “We have to respond after a great win [vs. the Titans], but we gotta respond from the first time we played them. It’s a big game, it’s a huge game, and we’ll definitely be looking to get our lick back.”
“You don’t want to lose to a team twice,” Jaguars linebacker Foye Oluokun said. “I just remember we didn’t tackle well, we had some communication errors in the defensive backfield … our energy was down and we didn’t play good football the whole game. We didn’t put our best foot forward in that game and they jumped on us because of that.”
The Texans entered that Week 3 matchup as a 7.5-point underdog after starting the year with an 0-2 record. But by halftime, it was Houston with a 17-0 lead.
While Jacksonville clawed back to within a touchdown of the lead, an 86-yard kickoff return for Texans fullback Andrew Beck ended much hope of a comeback.
“We remember that feeling and that gives you a little bit of motivation,” Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence said. “I think that only goes so far in this league, you still got to go and prepare and have a great plan and go execute on Sunday. You can have all the motivation in the world, I felt like we’ve been prepared in a lot of games and maybe didn’t play well.
“We all know what is at stake, there’s no hiding anything. You’re not going to pull any fast ones on anybody. We all know how big this game is and what it could mean at the end of the year.”
With a win, the 7-3 Jaguars would have a two-game lead in the AFC South and have tiebreakers all but wrapped up with a 4-1 record in divisional games. But a loss would allow the 6-4 Texans to pull even and secure the head-to-head tiebreaker with a season sweep.
