Jacksonville vs Houston: Jags’ Home-Field Advantage Undervalued in Vegas

When you handicap football as much as I do, you are apt to get a feel for the subtext of ordinary headlines. It is almost like when Sigmund Freud said “nothing is insignificant.”

Every headline and basic lead tells the reader something, even when put in the most boring and cliché way. For example:

“Hornets Still Optimistic About Final Weeks of Season” = Hornets are not in the running.

“Brutus Says He’s Making Progress with Injured Knee” = Do not expect the starting middle linebacker to play.

“Speedy Says He Would Score More Often if Targeted with More Passes” = Every day of a WR’s life.

How about a story that only needs 3 words, as in, “Losing Coach Fired.” The stories tend to use more words than necessary:

“Am I disappointed? Yeah, I’m disappointed,” said Fired White Man yesterday. “I wanted to keep helping these young men grow and develop in this league. But you know, the Sun will still come up tomorrow,” Fired White Man said.

And on and on.

One headline I utterly would not have expected to read on October 18th, 2018 – at least not from the point of view of October 18th, 2017 – is “Texans QBs coach sees progress from Deshaun Watson.” But there it is, fresh off the local Houston beat.

“Position coach X sees progress from struggling player Y” is an all-too-typical lead that only means one thing when a beat writer publishes it. The player has been running into problems and issues, and it is not certain when that will change.

How did it get this way? In 2017, Watson was a fireball before getting hurt. He nearly beat Tom Brady and the New England Patriots all by himself, just a few weeks after becoming one of America’s most acclaimed celebrity-athletes following his generous donation to Hurricane relief. From top-of-the-world philanthropy to “Position coach says not all is bleak with so-and-so” in just 12 short months?

Vegas odds-makers are not ready to give up on the former Clemson megastar just yet. Sin City is giving Houston merely a handful of points (+5) going into a trip to visit the brawny Jacksonville Jaguars.

As well-respected around the league as the Jaguars are for their defense, work ethic, and spectacular playoff run in 2017-18, it is safe to say the club is in a severe slump. The past 4 weeks of play have delivered a 1-3 record and 2 blow-out defeats for Jacksonville, each coming in the past 2 weeks.

A thrilling 31-12 win over New York seemed to right the ship headed into the October and November slate. But the Jags traveled to Kansas City in Week 5 and could not get out of their own way, failing to score more than 2 touchdowns (and 0 field goals) against one of the worst defenses in the NFL. Blake Bortles threw 4 interceptions including a pick-6, bringing old questions about his reliability back into sharp focus.

Bortles is a warrior, a scrappy game-manager QB who can open it up and make throws, but prefers to win as part of a team. 4 interceptions sort of nixes that plan. As the Arizona Cardinals have shown this season, if you have got an offense that can be described as solid/conservative you had better have a defense known as dominating-and-relentless, and a QB who does not give up the egg with blunders and bad judgment.

It got even worse at Jerry World last week as the Jags were annihilated by 33 points. “We got our a** kicked today. I don’t know what else to tell you,” said Jacksonville DT Malik Jackson after the catastrophe. “We got our a** kicked today. We will bounce back.”

They will rebound, but perhaps only at home for the time being.

Meanwhile, maybe Deshaun Watson’s QB coach was not just blowing smoke about the signal-caller’s progress. The Houston Texans have not been playing the hardest schedule, but they have been winning following a dreadful start, reeling-off 3 straight and thrashing the same Dallas Cowboys 19-16 in OT. Watson went 75% for almost 400 yards.

Houston’s defense is also playing well enough to have not allowed a 100-yard rusher or a 100-yard passer when the Buffalo Bills came to town for a 20-13 dismissal last week.

I would love to predict that Houston will keep trending upward. But there are stark variations in how these teams perform on the road and at home.

Jacksonville’s edge rush benefits from the roar of a stadium, keeping teams off the board who would usually run away with the contest. On the road, if their offense does not produce, they are often let down after 60 minutes. But at home the defense and special teams are often enough to buoy a marginal attack. In that respect, the Jags are a lot like the Seattle Seahawks.

Meanwhile, the Texans are 1-2 on the road and grappled to get past Indianapolis in the only win.

Take the Jags to cover (-5) and triumph by a touchdown or more on Sunday.