The defending AFC South champion Houston Texans have some work to do if they want to win the division for the third year in a row. The team sits two games back of both the Indianapolis Colts and Jacksonville Jaguars, two teams that have had shockingly strong starts to the season. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Titans ... exist, technically.
Despite a two game gap at the top, there's a lot of football left to be played, and the division is still completely up for grabs. Five games played isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things.
Here's what needs to change for each AFC South team to walk away with a title.
Houston Texans: Find a way to protect C.J. Stroud
Over the past two games, we've had a chance to see what the Texans offense looks like when it's able to keep quarterback C.J. Stroud clean. Unfortunately, it's not clear if the Texans did a better job protecting him because the offensive line is improving or if it just happened that Houston drew two easy matchups in a row.
The Titans and Ravens both rank among the bottom seven teams in the league in sacks, so protecting Stroud against them isn't too hard. PFF still ranks the Texans offensive line just 29th in the league, but noted that the line allowed just three pressures against Baltimore. Ed Ingram has been a great addition, but the team still needs to be willing to make changes on the interior if Juice Scruggs and/or Jake Andrews go back to struggling.
There's obviously more work to be done this offseason to keep Stroud upright and limited changes that can be made in-season, but if this recent run of strong line play proves to be fake, offensive coordinator Nick Caley shouldn't be afraid to get Trent Brown or Jarrett Patterson some run, or to even try Laken Tomlinson again and hope his struggles to start the year were a fluke.
Indianapolis Colts: Don't overwork Jonathan Taylor
I almost wrote "pray that Daniel Jones keeps being good," but I guess that's not really a change, is it? Instead, let's talk about the run game.
Jonathan Taylor hasn't played a full season since 2021. He appears to be "back" in the sense that he's playing like arguably the NFL's best running back again, with a league-best 480 yards and six touchdowns already. However, I worry about the workload.
Taylor is sixth among all running backs in positional attempt rate. 80.34 percent of running back carries for the Colts have been from Taylor, and his 94 carries sit just one carry behind Saquon Barkley for most in the NFL.
I know Tyler Goodson being hurt complicates things and that the Colts probably don't feel they can rely on rookie D.J. Giddens too much, but keeping Taylor healthy has to be the biggest concern at this point. Lose him, and I would guess you'd pretty quickly see regression from Jones.
Jacksonville Jaguars: Get Travis Hunter more involved
The Jaguars drafted Travis Hunter with the No. 2 overall pick because they thought he was a game-changing talent, and we've seen plenty of glimpses of that so far. We should still see more.
Hunter has played over half of the team's offensive snaps in each game so far this season, but his defensive snaps have been all over the place. Jacksonville's ability to generate turnovers has meant that it hasn't necessarily needed Hunter as much defensively, but turnovers tend to be pretty fluky. I still believe the best thing you can do is have your most talented guy on the field as much as possible, and Hunter likely helps more on defense than offense right now.
Though, if Jacksonville is going to keep playing him more offensively than defensively, it'd be nice to see more targets go his way, and for those targets to be higher-value targets. His 8.8 aDOT ranks 74th among wide receivers and he has just three deep targets while ranking 65th at the position in air yards. I think Jacksonville is leaving meat on the bone by not pushing the ball down the field with Hunter.
Tennessee Titans: IDK, suddenly find multiple more weapons for Cam Ward?
The 1-4 Titans are three games back of the Colts and Jaguars, but they might as well be a million games back at this point. The team's lone win came against the Cardinals in a game that Arizona would have won if not for a boneheaded fumble from Emari Demercado as he crossed the goal line, turning what would have been six points into a touchback. Then, a Cam Ward interception turned into a touchdown because the Cardinals defender fumbled the ball, and Tyler Lockett picked it up for the score.
Basically, this would be a winless team if not for two different extremely weird things happening in the same game.
If the Titans really wanted to battle for the division crown this season, they'd need to add talent at the trade deadline. Calvin Ridley is a reliable No. 1 receiver, and Chig Okonkwo is good enough at tight end, but there's just a giant void beyond that. Rookies Elic Ayomanor and Chimere Dike aren't cutting it right now. Lockett is past his prime. Tennessee would need to add at least two receivers and then just hope it can win a bunch of shootouts. Let's be real: that's not happening.