It was a strange year for the AFC South. The Indianapolis Colts were one of the league's hottest teams in the early going, but an injury to quarterback Daniel Jones led to an epic collapse. The Jacksonville Jaguars pulled off one of the NFL's biggest turnarounds, the Houston Texans did their customary "win a playoff game then lose in the Divisional Round" thing and the Tennessee Titans drafted a quarterback first overall and proceeded to give him less support than any NFL quarterback has ever received. (That's a joke ... mostly.)
With the offseason here, the entire division has questions that need answering between now and the start of the 2026 season, questions that will guide who can conquer this always wide-open division next year.
Houston Texans: Is C.J. Stroud the guy?
Houston's playoff run introduced a ton of doubt into quarterback C.J. Stroud's future. There's no nice way to say this, so I'll just come right out and say that Stroud was bad in the postseason. Really bad. Like, there were moments during Houston's playoff run where it looked like Stroud had never played quarterback before. Just some mind-bogglingly bad decisions that have to make Houston worried about potentially paying big money to extend Stroud in the near future.
Completion Percentage | Passing Yards | Touchdowns | Interceptions | Fumbles | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wild Card Round vs. PIT | 65.6 | 250 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
Divisional Round vs. NE | 42.6 | 212 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
So before the team starts signing free agents and drafting players, it has to figure out how it plans to approach the Stroud question. Will Anderson Jr. is going to need to be paid big money soon as well, which complicates the picture even more. Does Houston focus on short-term deals this offseason to give them the flexibility to move off of Stroud if he fails in 2026, or does the team try to sign some bargain players for multiple years with the expectation being that a large chunk of the cap will soon go to Stroud?
A related question: What does Houston do about its run game? Woody Marks showed flashes, but not enough for the team to feel confident letting him be the bellcow back next season, and you need a strong run game to try to help support Stroud, as the lack of one likely played a big role in his 2025 inconsistency.
Indianapolis Colts: How much do you commit to Daniel Jones?
For much of the 2025 NFL season, Daniel Jones looked like a top 15 NFL quarterback, maybe even bordering on top 10. Wherever you might have placed him among the players at his position, he was clearly a guy you could win football games with.
But a remarkable season from the former New York Giant ended with a torn Achilles, and now the Colts have to figure out what to do about Jones this offseason.
Certainly, bringing him back will be a priority. The Colts have a roster that could be good enough to make a deep playoff run with the right quarterback, and there's really no one else out there who can be that right quarterback, save for maybe ... uh, signing Kirk Cousins? Even that probably ends in disaster. Indianapolis needs to keep Jones around.
But what kind of contract do you offer him? He was really good in 2025, but also really bad during his time with the Giants.
Completion Percentage | Touchdown Percentage | Success Rate | Yards Per Game | QB Rating | Sack Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New York Giants (2019-2024) | 64.1 | 3.1 | 42.8 | 208.3 | 84.3 | 8.49 |
Indianapolis Colts (2025) | 68.0 | 4.9 | 52.0 | 238.5 | 100.2 | 5.42 |
Add in the Achilles injury, and there's a lot of risk in signing Jones to a long-term deal, as it could saddle the Colts with a bloated contract for a quarterback who winds up being more of a problem than a solution.
At the same time, signing Jones to something like a two-year deal with an easy-ish out after 2026 could backfire as well, because he might bounce back better than ever, and then you wind up paying more than you would have if you worked out a long-term deal in advance. It's kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, and the answer all depends on where the Colts think Jones is at when free agency begins.
Jacksonville Jaguars: What's the plan for Travis Hunter?
The Jaguars invested big in Travis Hunter by trading up for the two-way star, but his rookie season ended early when Hunter suffered a knee injury. There were moments when Hunter looked like the player he was advertised to be, but it was also clear that playing both offense and defense in the NFL isn't easy.
The addition of Jakobi Meyers in the slot kind of makes it obvious what the plan probably is with Hunter, and that's to primarily focus on developing him as a defensive back with some offensive work still sprinkled in. Or, at least, that should be the case.
How the Jags move in free agency and the draft will tell us plenty about what they really plan to do with Hunter. If we see a sizable focus on the secondary, that would suggest they intend to still keep trying this two-way experiment out, or even that they intend to make him more of a full-time wide receiver.
Snap Rate | |
|---|---|
Offense | 67% |
Defense | 36% |
Hunter played offense more as a rookie, so it's possible that head coach Liam Coen is going to be resistant to taking him off the field offensively. I know what I would do if I coached the Jaguars, but more important at this point is that Jacksonville approaches this offseason with some kind of plan for Hunter.
Tennessee Titans: How do you get Cam Ward the help he needs?
Cam Ward spent his rookie season throwing passes to a collection of guys that the average football fan probably can't even name. Once Calvin Ridley went down, his best wide receivers were a pair of Day 3 rookies in Elic Ayomanor and Chimere Dike. Add in an offensive line that didn't seem capable of protecting Ward — he was sacked a league-high 55 times, though some of that was also on him — and it's no surprise that inconsistency plagued Ward's first year in the NFL.
There were flashes of brilliance from Ward mixed in with his inconsistency, though, and the Titans have to figure out how to build a team around him that he can actually win with.
That likely starts with addressing wide receiver. I don't necessarily know if Tennessee needs to go all out and use the No. 4 pick on the position, but what about trading back? You probably have your pick of Carnell Tate or Jordyn Tyson if you stay put, but if you could get other draft assets and move back to the tail-end of the top 10, you can still get one of the two.
The Titans might opt to see who's on the board in the second round instead, where Louisville's Chris Bell or Georgia's Zachariah Branch are options, or they could trade up into the bottom half of the first round to go after Washington's Denzel Boston or Texas A&M's KC Concepcion.
Whatever the answer is, the Titans need to add a young wide receiver in the draft who can be Ward's No. 1 target in the long-term. Failure to do so means you are failing your No. 1 pick.