There's a fun race developing for some of the most valuable real estate in sports. Since the NFL moved to a 14-team playoff field and limited the first-round bye to the top seed in each conference during the 2020 season, landing that bye has been incredibly valuable for teams with Super Bowl aspirations. In a small sample of six teams, four 1-seeds have advanced to the championship game. That group includes both top seeds a year ago, with the Chiefs and Eagles both enjoying a week off before storming into Arizona for a classic Super Bowl.
While those same Eagles hold a two-game lead for the top spot in the NFC, the No. 1 spot in the AFC remains up for grabs. Three different teams held the 1-seed in the AFC at one point or another Sunday. The Jaguars claimed it after the early games with their narrow win over the Texans. A comeback victory by the Chiefs over the Raiders put Patrick Mahomes & Co. in front after the afternoon games. When the Ravens claimed the night game with a victory over the Chargers, John Harbaugh's team ensured it will hit its upcoming bye atop the conference.
Throw in the Dolphins, who blew out the Jets in the NFL's Black Friday debut, and there are four three-loss teams in the conference. With all due respect to the Browns, Steelers and everyone else in the conference, it's extremely likely the top seed in the AFC will come from one of those three-loss teams riding high atop their respective divisions.
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Let's break down that race with six weeks to go. What happened to these teams in Week 12? What's going on with them this season? And what does their path to the top seed in the AFC look like over the next month and a half? I'll also include the ESPN Football Power Index (FPI) odds for each team to get the 1-seed. We'll start with the team with the best chance to land it:
Jump to a team:
Chiefs | Dolphins
Jaguars | Ravens
1. Kansas City Chiefs (8-3)
Week 12 result: Beat Raiders 31-17
Chances of being the 1-seed, per FPI: 42.2%
As is often the case for the Chiefs, the Raiders served as an opportunity to get right after a difficult loss. During Andy Reid's time in Kansas City, Kansas City has gone 18-3 against its division rivals, including a 6-1 record in games against the Raiders after a defeat. Sunday's win was basically a typical matchup between these two teams, as the Chiefs have won the average contest between these two games by a score of 33-19. It wasn't a breeze -- Las Vegas went up 14-0 early in the second quarter -- but the Chiefs scored touchdowns on four of their next five possessions to take control.
I talked earlier this season about the Chiefs' defense and how it has thrived. While the Eagles gave Kansas City trouble last week in what ended up as a narrow Philly victory, the defense continues to be the cornerstone. The Chiefs rank fifth in the NFL in expected points added (EPA) per play allowed, ensconced between the 49ers in fourth and the Jets in sixth. They rank fourth in points allowed per drive. Josh Jacobs might have gotten them for a long touchdown run Sunday, but the Chiefs are very, very good on defense.
My one concern with the Chiefs on paper might have been their pass rush, but they rank third in sack rate. Chris Jones naturally leads the way and was the best player on the field in that Eagles game, but he's getting more help. Second-year edge rusher George Karlaftis actually leads the team with eight sacks and 26 initial pressures, although Jones missed the first game of the season. Budding star cornerback Trent McDuffie has rushed the passer only 44 times, but he has been a difference-maker with those blitzes, producing two sacks and eight pressures. He has forced five fumbles, although four of those have been after catches.
Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has been more aggressive in allowing corner L'Jarius Sneed to shadow top receivers. The results have been impressive. Sneed was the primary defender holding A.J. Brown to one catch for 8 yards in the Eagles game, and while Davante Adams gave Sneed trouble early Sunday, the wideout finished with five catches for 73 yards. No No. 1 receiver has managed 50 yards and a touchdown against Kansas City since Amon-Ra St. Brown got there in the opener.
Strangely, the Chiefs have found their offense to be lacking in key moments. Drops from wide receivers have been the most pressing problem; a Kadarius Toney drop led to a game-changing pick-six in the Week 1 loss to the Lions, while Marquez Valdes-Scantling dropped a would-be touchdown pass late in the defeat against Philadelphia.
What looked like a weakness for the Chiefs heading into the season has been even worse in reality. Toney has been unable to stay healthy or make consistent plays. For all the hype about how he looked during the offseason, Skyy Moore hasn't been able to draw targets and hasn't topped 40 receiving yards in a game since September. Rookie second-round pick Rashee Rice has flashed and just had his first 100-yard game Sunday, but the Chiefs weren't anticipating that Rice and former Bucs backup Justin Watson would be leading the wideouts in routes on a weekly basis.
Can the Chiefs win a Super Bowl with this sort of receiving corps? Yes. We saw them do it last season. That team had JuJu Smith-Schuster instead of Rice, but given how the wideout-needy Patriots have marginalized Smith-Schuster this season, I doubt losing him in free agency has sunk Kansas City at the position.
The 2022 Chiefs had tight end Travis Kelce put up a dominant season, producing 1,338 yards and 12 touchdowns. While he has been all over the headlines this season, it hasn't necessarily been because of his play. As Kelce has struggled for consistency -- and missed the Week 1 loss to the Lions with a knee injury -- has he taken a step backward? It didn't appear he had been as impactful as the player who took over games last season.
A closer look at the data suggests Kelce hasn't dropped off. In 2022, the future Hall of Famer averaged 2.44 yards per route run, which ranked 11th in the league among all receivers. In 2023? After a solid Week 12, he's actually up to 2.52 yards per route run, which is ... 14th among all receivers. He was targeted on 28.5% of his routes last season and is actually seeing the ball more often this season, with a target rate just north of 30%. On a snap-by-snap basis, he is better than the guy we saw a year ago.
The difference? He's not playing as many snaps. Reid has steadily brought down Kelce's snap share. After playing a career-high 95% of the snaps during Mahomes' first season as a starter in 2018, his share of the workload has dropped in each of the ensuing seasons. He was at 93% in 2019, 86% in 2020, 82% in 2021, and 80% in 2022. (Those numbers don't include the games he missed because of COVID or sat out while resting.)
This season, leaving aside the Week 1 game, Kelce had played only about 71% of the offensive snaps for the Chiefs before the Eagles game. Unsurprisingly, in a close contest against a great opponent, Reid upped his snap share for that game to 94%, with Kelce playing nearly 20 more snaps than he had in any other game. On Sunday, he was back down to 76% of the offensive snaps. He's now at 74% for the entire season and running about 29 routes per game, down from just over 32 routes per contest a year ago.
The Philadelphia game should tell us what we need to know. Reid is going to up Kelce's snap rate when the games matter most, which should be no surprise. The good news for Chiefs fans -- and their best case for finishing yet again as the top seed in the AFC -- is there might not be many games taxing Kelce until the postseason.
What's next: The Chiefs have the easiest schedule remaining of these four contenders for the top spot in the AFC. A December and January run-in that might have looked tricky on paper over the summer looks much easier in reality, as they don't have a single remaining contest against a team with a winning record.
The Bills have dropped to .500, while the Chargers are three games below. The rematch of what has become one of the league's best rivalries will be muted with Jake Browning filling in for Joe Burrow in Cincinnati, while the Chiefs also host the aforementioned Raiders and travel to play a flailing Patriots team. It's hardly out of the question that Kansas City runs the table and finishes 14-3.
2. Baltimore Ravens (9-3)
Week 12 result: Beat Chargers 20-10
Chances of being the 1-seed, per FPI: 22.5%
Winning is rarely a pretty endeavor for the Ravens, but pretty isn't necessary when they're hitting the bye after Thanksgiving with the top seed in the AFC. Sunday was a slog on offense, as the Chargers held Baltimore to 13 points for most of the night before a late Zay Flowers touchdown broke things open. The Ravens won't care about their streak of five consecutive games with 30 points or more ending in Los Angeles.
In a season in which even the 10-1 Eagles have looked vulnerable for long stretches of games, I don't think any team has been more cumulatively dominant on both sides of the football than Baltimore. It has led inside the final two minutes in each of its three losses, games in which it felt like it beat itself as opposed to getting outplayed by the opposing team. Drops cost them an overtime loss to the Colts, while sloppy play and five turnovers led to losses to the Steelers and the Browns.
At their best, has any team been more dominant? Early-season wins by multiple scores over the Texans and Browns look more impressive with hindsight, given how these teams have played over the remainder of the year. The Ravens have four wins by at least two touchdowns over teams with winning records (the Texans, Browns, Lions and Seahawks). The 49ers are the only other team with more than two, and no team had four such wins in 2022. The last team to have five of those wins in a single season was the 2014 Patriots, who won the Super Bowl. Before them, it was the 2007 Patriots, who went 16-0. We don't often see teams dominate other good squads the way the Ravens have at times this season.
And yet, based in part on several years of frustrating performances, most Ravens fans likely would be less inclined to sum up this team by pointing to the dominant wins over the Seahawks and Lions and lean more toward games like Sunday's. Baltimore had an early 88-yard drive for a touchdown, a few drives in which it ended up in no man's land and had to endure a missed field goal attempt by Justin Tucker before another defensive stop handed the Ravens a short field. Flowers' 37-yard jet sweep to the house put the game to bed, but for most of the contest, the Ravens weren't able to produce the big play or long, steady drives they needed to build a big lead on the Chargers.
The two key plays on the final meaningful drives for each team might illustrate why the Ravens and Chargers are where they are through Week 12. Flowers' touchdown came on a play in which he was being covered in motion by Chargers cornerback Essang Bassey. Bassey, 25, began the season with the Broncos before being cut; he had played just 25 defensive snaps with L.A. and was inactive a week ago before being thrust into the lineup. Coach Brandon Staley had already traded away 2022 free agent addition J.C. Jackson and decided to bench cornerback Michael Davis, creating a need for corners in the lineup. Bassey played 40 snaps, but he wasn't able to hang in space with Flowers, who ran past the backup for the game-sealing score.
On the other side of the field, the Ravens were getting one of the biggest plays of the game from a backup cornerback. Arthur Maulet, 30, is a journeyman who has played for five different teams over his seven-year career. He has survived in the league by being versatile and playing special teams. Signed to a one-year deal for just over $1 million by the Ravens in late July, his role on the team was only secured by injuries to Marlon Humphrey and Trayvon Mullen.
Maulet played just seven defensive snaps Sunday, but it's hard to make more of an impact than he did on those plays. His first defensive snap was an interception on the Hail Mary at the end of the first half. When he came back in during the fourth quarter, he tackled Jalen Guyton in bounds and in open space to keep the clock running. On the fourth-and-6 that ended the drive, he came off the edge on a slot blitz, raised his hands to prevent Justin Herbert from firing off a quick pass and then successfully took down a quarterback who outweighs him by nearly 50 pounds for what amounted to a sack. Herbert threw into the air toward nobody in particular as he went down to trigger an intentional grounding. One team's backup cornerback was lacking with the game on the line. The other rose to the occasion.
The free rusher was a product of a well-timed exotic pressure from Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald, who should be finishing his final season in Baltimore before getting a head-coaching job somewhere. As The Ringer's Benjamin Solak noted on X, the Ravens are getting incredible performances out of players up and down their defense.
It's one thing to have Roquan Smith playing at a high level, but Kyle Van Noy was out of football to begin the season and has six sacks and 21 pressures in nine games. Jadeveon Clowney was on the market until August before signing a one-year, $2.5 million deal; he has 7.5 sacks and 34 pressures, with the latter mark ranking sixth in the league. Brandon Stephens was converting to safety during training camp; injuries have forced him to stick at cornerback, and he's been good enough to keep Rock Ya-Sin and Ronald Darby out of the lineup when everyone's healthy.
Two homegrown players have also made the leap. Before the season, I highlighted Odafe Oweh and David Ojabo as players who needed to grow for the Ravens to thrive. Oweh has been fine -- he has four sacks -- while Ojabo hit injured reserve after three games. It hasn't been the players I expected or counted on for Baltimore, but it also hasn't mattered with Van Noy and Clowney playing well on the edge.
Instead, it has been two other players who have made huge strides. Kyle Hamilton was the player the Ravens took as a fallback after the Eagles moved ahead of them for Jordan Davis in last year's draft. He struggled as a rookie at times, and there were moments it felt like he might end up as a tweener, lacking the speed to play free safety and the size to play inside the box.
Well, that's out the window. Hamilton has been a star. He's stellar at rushing the passer and playing at the line of scrimmage, where he has three sacks and 13 pressures on 31 pass rush opportunities. A Hamilton blitz produced a pick-six early in the loss to the Browns. On top of that, he has allowed a 45.8 passer rating in coverage, with two picks and eight passes defensed across 40 targets. That's the fifth-best rating in football.
The even bigger leap has come from Justin Madubuike, who is having one of the greatest contract years in recent memory. While Madubuike had settled in as a solid interior defender and seemed likely to have a long pro career, I don't think many people saw him as the sort of player who would attract Pro Bowl attention as an interior disruptor.
He's going there at the end of the season. The fourth-year defender leads the team with 10 sacks and 10 tackles for loss. There's a handful of snaps in each and every game in which Madubuike looks utterly unblockable in the way that guys like Chris Jones can't be handled by offensive linemen. On Sunday, per NFL Next Gen Stats, his seven pressures tied a career-high. By their pressure metric, Madubuike's 45 pressures are the second most for any defensive tackle this season.
The Ravens have been able to overcome injuries to Humphrey, Ojabo and Marcus Williams on defense. On offense, the picture is murkier. J.K. Dobbins has missed most of the season with a torn Achilles. Oft-injured tackle Ronnie Stanley has been in and out of the lineup. Tight end Mark Andrews is expected to miss the rest of the regular season after suffering an ankle injury in last week's win over the Bengals.
The young guys are going to need to win out for the Ravens. With Rashod Bateman struggling to impress and Odell Beckham Jr. topping 60 yards just once all season, Flowers has needed to step in and be the team's top wideout. Isaiah Likely played four snaps in Week 10 and has needed to be this team's primary receiving tight end since; he had four catches for a team-high 40 receiving yards against the Chargers.
The next one up might be speedy rookie back Keaton Mitchell, who was on injured reserve to begin the season before emerging with a 138-yard game late against the Seahawks. He added two big plays on six touches against the Browns, and after a quiet game against the Bengals, he appeared to take the lead role in the backfield Sunday. The rookie undrafted free agent led all backs with nine carries, 11 touches and 89 yards from scrimmage. His speed is a much-needed burst out of the backfield for Baltimore.
Of course, the most important player on the roster is also healthy. Lamar Jackson's recent seasons have ended in injuries in Week 14 of the 2021 season and Week 13 a year ago. Having made it through Week 12, he's now on bye before getting the Rams in two weeks. With him producing his best season as a passer since his MVP campaign in 2019, the star quarterback is even more essential to Baltimore's chances of winning than he was over the past two seasons. It hasn't been pretty, but if you told the Ravens before the season that they would be hitting the bye at 9-3 with a healthy Jackson in the fold for the stretch run, that's a deal they would have taken 100 times out of 100.
What's next: After the bye, the Ravens have the toughest slate among the four three-loss teams in the AFC. Their final four games are all against teams that currently hold positions in the postseason, with a road trip against the Jaguars and 49ers before home tilts against the Dolphins and Steelers. The Rams, who have won two straight and are about to get a home game against a Browns team playing third-choice quarterback PJ Walker, aren't pushovers either.
By the time the Rams show up in Week 14, the Ravens might be out of the top spot in the AFC. The Chiefs, Jaguars and Dolphins all have better records in the conference than Baltimore, which would cost it in the case of a tiebreaker. The Ravens can help alleviate those tiebreakers by beating the Jags and Fins, but those three losses to the Browns, Colts and Steelers in the conference could come back to haunt them in a tiebreaker scenario.
3. Miami Dolphins (8-3)
Week 12 result: Beat Jets 34-13
Chances of being the 1-seed, per FPI: 18.1%
How much difference can one defender make? At the beginning of the season, when the Dolphins were blown out by the Bills in Buffalo, we were lamenting the loss of Jalen Ramsey. With the star cornerback sidelined by a meniscus injury, they were vulnerable across from Xavien Howard. Josh Allen attacked Kader Kohou and Justin Bethel in coverage, avoided Howard and threw for 320 yards and four touchdowns in a 48-20 victory.
Since Ramsey came back in Week 8, Miami has been a different defense. Before he was back in the lineup, the Dolphins ranked 23rd in EPA per play and last in QBR allowed. From Week 8 onward? They are first in both EPA per play and QBR allowed. By these numbers, Ramsey might be the league's most valuable defender. Who else can transform a defense from worst to first against the pass overnight?
Let's be realistic, though. The Dolphins have benefited from a friendly slate of opposing quarterbacks over that stretch. While they did have to play Patrick Mahomes in Germany, their other three opponents have been flailing outside of their time against Miami. Ramsey debuted in a win over the Patriots. His next win came against a Raiders team starting Aidan O'Connell. Last Friday, Ramsey & Co. shut down Tim Boyle and the Jets in a 34-13 blowout victory.
Even with the generous slate, it would be tough to argue that Ramsey hasn't made a difference. He has three picks in four games, including two in the seven-point victory over the Raiders. He has allowed a passer rating of 4.2 in coverage while giving up a total of 60 yards through four games. The Dolphins as a whole allowed 11 plays of 30 yards or more through their seven games without Ramsey; they've given up only two such plays over the ensuing four appearances.
Ramsey's presence has made life easier for the players around him. Kohou was struggling playing outside, but with Ramsey around, the Dolphins have been able to move their second-year cornerback back into the interior to play in the slot as planned. Ramsey isn't shadowing No. 1 receivers and has mostly stuck to one side of the field, but they have still been able to rely on their coverage.
Having great cover cornerbacks might typically encourage defensive coordinators to blitz more, given that they can trust the guys holding up behind those rushers in coverage. The Dolphins have basically stopped blitzing and still managed to get home. Over the past month, they have sent extra rushers just 2.6% of the time, which ranks 31st. Despite that modest blitz rating, they still have pressured the opposing quarterback more than 32% of the time over that stretch, which is the 13th-best mark. Their 9% sack rate over that run is in the top 10, and their 8.8% sack rate all season ranks sixth.
Here's where the Dolphins will find out whether they can win without another singular player on defense. Late in the blowout win over the Jets on Friday, third-year edge rusher Jaelan Phillips appeared to catch his foot in the infamous Jersey turf and suffered a torn Achilles. The same turf that took out Aaron Rodgers in Week 1 will cost Phillips the rest of his season.
Phillips hasn't yet broken out as a household name, but he has consistently popped on tape as a player whose physical tools could unlock a Pro Bowl-caliber skill set. He had seven sacks and 25 knockdowns a year ago and was in the middle of a streak of five straight games with at least one sack when he suffered the injury. Miami has been more than 17 points of QBR worse without him on the field this season, which includes the game against the Bills, a contest he missed with an oblique injury.
Unlike with the Ramsey injury, the Dolphins have alternatives up front across from Bradley Chubb to replace Phillips. Andrew Van Ginkel has been an underrated player on the edge, although he has seen time in recent weeks spelling David Long at inside linebacker. Emmanuel Ogbah has been buried on the depth chart and played just 21% of the defensive snaps; the veteran will be called into a larger role in the rotation to help cover for Phillips' absence. Miami could also look to add a free agent, with Derek Barnett and Jeremiah Attaochu as possible additions.
On the offensive side, the laser show that was the first six weeks of the season has given way to something more inconsistent. Buoyed by their 70-point effort against the Broncos, Mike McDaniel's offense averaged a league-best 3.2 points per possession through the first six weeks. Since then, the offense has averaged 1.9 points per trip, which is tied with the Chiefs for 17th.
Some elements of Miami's performance were never going to be sustainable. It converted 21 of its 26 red zone trips into touchdowns during that six-week start, which was the highest rate in football. Over the ensuing five games, it has made 11 trips to the end zone and converted six into touchdowns, dropping its TD rate from nearly 81% to less than 55% from the first half of their season to the second.
The number of trips is also a concern. The Dolphins' explosiveness on offense means they don't need to have a ton of trips into the red zone to score, but they were both explosive and punishing on their trips down the field early in the season. Since then, they've mostly had to rely on the big play.
Owing to injuries to Terron Armstead, Isaiah Wynn, Robert Jones and Robert Hunt at different times up front, the offensive line play has been inconsistent. They are still getting the ball out at the fastest rate in football and keeping Tua Tagovailoa's pressure rate low in the process, but what happens when he does get pressured has changed. Through Week 6, his 87.8 QBR when pressured was the best mark of any quarterback. Since then, his QBR when pressured has dropped by nearly 80 points to 9.0, which ranks 22nd. His off-target rate is north of 31% under pressure, which is also in the bottom six among passers.
Armstead is back, and getting healthier on the interior would help. De'Von Achane's return from a knee injury was quickly cut short after a handful of snaps in Week 11, but getting the explosive rookie back into the rotation on a full-time basis would give McDaniel another speed threat to mix into his dazzling playbook. Raheem Mostert has stayed healthy, which has been a blessing for a team that lost Achane and Jeff Wilson to injuries.
It still feels like the Dolphins could use one more receiver behind Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, both of whom have been banged up in recent weeks. They have gotten more aggressive in spotting Hill's snap count; after taking 90% of the snaps against the Chiefs, the star has played 59% and 63% of the snaps in the wins over the Raiders and Jets. They typically rest Hill in blowouts, but the win against the Raiders was close throughout, and they didn't break open the Jets game until the fourth quarter. Hill has a legitimate path toward MVP and will want to become the first receiver ever to hit 2,000 yards in a season, but as he battles hand and ankle injuries, it would make sense to give him reduced workloads over the next few weeks.
What's next: The Dolphins' next few games should be easily winnable. They travel to face the Commanders on Sunday before welcoming the Titans and Jets to Miami. Those three teams have gone a combined 2-10 in November. Losing in any of those games would be a catastrophic upset for their chances of landing the top seed.
After that, things get tougher. The Dolphins host the Cowboys on Christmas Eve, travel to face the Ravens on New Year's Eve and finish up in Week 18 against the Bills. Four of their final six games are at home, where they're 5-0, but those five home wins have come against the Broncos, Giants, Panthers, Patriots and Raiders. The Cowboys and the Bills will be much stiffer competition.
While Miami was able to launch an incredible comeback victory over the Ravens in Baltimore a year ago, this is a much better Ravens defense than the one we saw at the beginning of 2022. If the Dolphins end up with the top seed in the conference, they'll have earned it.
4.Jacksonville Jaguars (8-3)
Week 12 result: Beat Texans 24-21
Chances of being the 1-seed, per FPI: 15%
It's tough to have as much riding on a single play in Week 12 as the AFC South had on a field goal attempt. Matt Ammendola's 58-yard kick at the end of Sunday's game would have tied the score at 24 and sent it into overtime. A Texans win would have tied them with their division rivals from Jacksonville at 7-4 and given C.J. Stroud & Co. an unassailable tiebreaker after sweeping the Jags in the regular season. The Jags would have dropped, in real time, to the sixth seed.
Instead, Ammendola's kick hit the base of the stanchion and bounced out. Jacksonville's victory pushed it two games ahead of Houston in the AFC South. The victory canceled out the Texans' win earlier, leaving the Jags with significant tiebreaker advantages and effectively giving Doug Pederson's team a 2½-game lead over the Texans with six games to go. As they walked off the field, the Jaguars were the top seed in the AFC.
Had the Jaguars allowed even a single additional yard to Stroud and the Texans offense on that final drive, Ammendola's kick would have been good, and the two teams would have headed to overtime. The Texans actually had started their last series of the game 2 yards closer to the end zone, but the Jaguars started that final series with a sack and then pressured Stroud into a third-down incompletion.
The Jags didn't stop Stroud altogether, but they sacked him twice on that final drive, knocked him down seven times and pressured him on 21 of his 46 dropbacks, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Stroud produced 258 yards on his 25 blissful, pressure-free dropbacks, but the 21 pressured looks netted only 46 yards. The pass rush won the game.
While the most obvious path for a Jaguars leap in 2023 involved Trevor Lawrence playing at an MVP level, they find themselves competing for the top spot in the conference because of what has been going on up front. Josh Allen, who had 2.5 sacks and four knockdowns Sunday, has been stellar. Next Gen Stats noted that he had 12 pressures Sunday, the most for him in any single game as a pro. Eight of them came against Pro Bowl left tackle Laremy Tunsil. Allen now has a career-high 12 sacks with six more games remaining.
Allen has been the true standout player and the Defensive Player of the Year candidate on this roster, but he's not the only one. Travon Walker, the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft, hasn't outplayed No. 2 pick Aidan Hutchinson, but he has flashed more often in his sophomore season. Foyesade Oluokun, the team's big free agent addition at linebacker, is playing at an All-Pro level. Fellow starting linebacker Devin Lloyd had a tough time against George Kittle, but a defense that was 32nd in the NFL in QBR on throws to tight ends last season is the third-best at the moment.
For the first time since that fateful 2017 campaign -- when Jacksonville nearly beat New England in the AFC title game -- the Jaguars have a legitimately impressive defense. They rank 10th in EPA per play on defense this season and fourth in win probability added on that side of the ball, behind only the Steelers, Ravens and Eagles. EPA doesn't adjust for strength of schedule, but DVOA does, and the improvement there is even bigger: Jacksonville ranked 23th in defensive DVOA a year ago and was sixth before Sunday's game, when it held the Texans to 21 points across 10 drives, albeit with the help of two missed field goals from Ammendola.
Since allowing 30 points to the Texans' offense in a blowout loss in Week 3, the Jacksonville defense has allowed 20 points or fewer in six of its eight ensuing games. The Saints got to 24, but the most difficult challenge the Jaguars faced over the past two months was the one time their defense failed: The 49ers marched up and down the field and scored 34 points in a rout. The only moral victory might have been denying Christian McCaffrey a touchdown at the end of the game, snapping the star back's consecutive games streak.
The Jags have won seven of their past eight games, but that loss to the 49ers will be an easy disqualifier for observers who don't believe in AFC South teams. There have been seasons in which the top team in the South has beaten up on bad competition, but that hasn't really been the case this year. The teams Jacksonville has played during this 7-1 stretch have a combined record of 47-42. You can argue the Steelers might not be quite as impressive as their record, but the Jaguars have beaten two teams in the playoffs as they currently stand and a handful of others competing for wild-card spots over this stretch.
If anything, offensive inconsistency remains a problem for the Jaguars, who have had more near-scores go awry for various reasons than any other team. While Lawrence averaged 9.6 yards per attempt Sunday, the narrow victory was another example. At the end of the first half, he hit Christian Kirk on a deep crossing route for 57 yards, with Kirk stepping out of bounds a yard before the goal line. With one second left on the clock, Pederson sent two extra offensive linemen onto the field and attempted to pitch the ball to Travis Etienne, only for immediate penetration into the backfield to blow up the play for no gain, costing them what could have been game-changing points.
If you believe that a killer instinct is a thing for an NFL offense, the Jaguars lack it. They have averaged 4.1 points per red zone trip this season, which ranks 29th. Only the widely panned offenses of the Saints, Jets and Giants have been worse. Jacksonville has eight whiffs for no points across its 31 red zone opportunities; only the Giants have come away from the red zone without any points more often.
The Jags have to find a way to execute more consistently in the red zone. Some of the issues have been with the offensive line, which has never seemed to get settled after Cam Robinson was suspended for the first month of the season. Rookie right tackle Anton Harrison struggled early before improving as the season has progressed, and left guard Ben Bartch was benched for swing tackle Walker Little, who missed the better part of four games with a knee injury. They traded for Vikings guard Ezra Cleveland and needed him Sunday, when Robinson suffered a knee injury in the first half and wasn't able to return. Little moved back to left tackle and will stay there if Robinson is out for any extended period of time. The line has to play better, especially in short yardage, for the offense to thrive.
Etienne's workload was also becoming a problem. Through Week 8, his 151 carries were 14 more than any other player in the league. That's not the sort of workload Pederson typically wants to give his primary back, and it's not the best use of Etienne, who was averaging only 3.9 yards per carry. With rookie third-round pick Tank Bigsby struggling, though, they needed another solution.
Enter D'Ernest Johnson, who has been a difference-maker over the past two games. Against the Titans, Johnson had a 34-yard catch to help set up a field goal before halftime. On Sunday, the former Browns back took a screen 42 yards to help set up a Lawrence touchdown. With Jamal Agnew on injured reserve, he's also serving as the team's kick returner. Keeping Etienne fresh for January is going to be essential for the Jaguars.
So much of the conversation about the Jaguars revolves around Lawrence, and you can understand why: He's a legendary college player who is the most conspicuous player on a team that often flies under the national radar. Right now, he ranks ninth in QBR; the passing offense has its problems, but it's neither carrying them to victories nor keeping them from competing. What happens around Lawrence is going to determine whether they stay in this rarified air or fall back in the weeks to come.
What's next: The Jaguars have six more games to go, with two coming against teams currently occupying playoff spots in the Browns and Ravens. They have three matchups against backup quarterbacks down the stretch, with Joe Burrow and Deshaun Watson both out for the season and Ryan Tannehill benched for Will Levis in Tennessee.