Jaguars' TNF Win over Titans Illustrates Sad State of Dismal AFC South

Supposedly, there was a football game played in Jacksonville Thursday night.

Allegedly, the Jaguars won this game, and in defeating the Tennessee Titans 19-13, the Jaguars "rose" to within a half-game of "first place" in the AFC South.

The reality? Thursday's game was a microcosm. A metaphor. A statement.

And the statement it made was this: The 2015 AFC South makes the 2014 NFC South look like the 2013 NFC West.

Last year, when the Carolina Panthers won the NFC South with a record of 7-8-1, there was all sorts of hand-wringing about a team with a losing record making the playoffs. The Panthers abated that a bit with a win over a short-handed Arizona Cardinals squad in the Wild Card Round.

Those hand-wringers are going to snap both wrists over the raging dumpster fire that is the AFC South this season:

"

AFC South: Texans 4-5 Colts 4-5 Jags 4-6 Titans 2-8 Jags in the mix to host a playoff game. For real.

— SI NFL (@si_nfl) November 20, 2015"

A quick look at the division inspires any number of feelings. Most can be cured with either Pepto Bismol or antacids.

Mind you, this isn't an issue unique to the AFC South this season. The NFC East has one team at .500 and three teams below. Twenty of the NFL's 32 teams headed into Week 11 with more losses than wins. There are a few really good teams, and a boatload of bad ones.

But the AFC South is the poster child for this putridity.

Team	Record	Total Off.*	PPG Rank*	Total Def.*	PAPG Rank*
Indianapolis Colts	4-5-0	15	19	28	22
Houston Texans	4-5-0	13	26	12	17
Jacksonville Jaguars	4-6-0	22	23	19	30
Tennessee Titans	2-8-0	30	27	5	T-18

The 4-5 Indianapolis Colts were a trendy pick to represent the AFC in Super Bowl 50 before the season. The team is undefeated inside the division. Of course, it is also 1-5 outside of it and now sports a starting quarterback closer to being 60 than he is to being 20.

The similarly 4-5 Houston Texans just knocked off the previously undefeated Cincinnati Bengals and possess the NFL's best defensive player in J.J. Watt. They also possess (at present) the lethal offensive duo of quarterback T.J. "Who?" Yates and running back Alfred "Fall Forward and Hope" Blue.

The "surging" Jaguars? Well, after wins in three of their past four games, the Jaguars sit only a half-game out of first place. With both the Colts and Texans playing teams with winning records this week (the Atlanta Falcons and New York Jets, respectively), there's a very real chance the Jaguars could enter Week 12 tied for "first place" in the division.

While speaking with NFL Network's Tracy Wolfson after the game, Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley commended his players for their recent winning ways:

"

I'm so happy for these guys. Their will the last couple weeks...to have it turn out the way it did was great.

We're going to celebrate this one, have some fun with it. The guys will come in, we'll get back to work...it's a great feeling any time you get a win. The way these guys did it, the way they fought back...I'm so proud of them.

"

The way they did it? Proud? Are you serious?

On Thursday, the Jaguars won one of the uglier NFL games in recent memory, ugly in no small part because the Jags' "Color Rush" uniforms made them look like 11 very large bottles of mustard:

The week before, the Jaguars won thanks to a penalty that never should have been called because another penalty should have been called that would have meant the first penalty never happened.

I'm serious. That's what happened.

Those thrilling and inspiring victories gave the Jaguars their first two-game winning streak since December—of 2013.

And that leaves tonight's losers, the Titanics...I mean Titans.

They're in last place in arguably the worst division of the Super Bowl era. They already fired their head coach. They picked second in the 2015 draft and may well pick earlier next season. So that more or less sums them up.

Each of the AFC South teams ranks outside of the NFL's top 25 in total offense, total defense, points scored per game or points allowed per game. The top 25. These teams aren't just flawed. Each has a weakness you could drive a bus through. They are ungood. All of them.

This isn't to say that Jaguars fans shouldn't be happy. Happiness is relative, and when you've been as bad as the Jags have been for as long as they have, any step in the right direction is cause for optimism.

But let's go ahead and stow the champagne and party hats. Curtail the celebrating.

Because given the contestants in the division "race" the Jaguars find themselves in, the only thing the "champions" of the AFC South are going to win in 2015 is the right to get destroyed at home by the AFC's No. 5 seed in January.

Congratulations.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter, @IDPSharks. 

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