HOUSTON (AP) — The Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars are both desperate to move on after last week’s blowout losses when they meet in Houston on Sunday.
Houston opened the season with two wins before a 34-7 rout by Minnesota in Week 3. The Jaguars are in a far worse spot, still winless and reeling from an embarrassing 47-10 drubbing by Buffalo on Monday night.
“Look, there’s going to be adversity in this league, you’re going to be faced with it year-in and year-out,” Jacksonville coach Doug Pederson said. “But it’s how you bounce back from it, fight through it.”
Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud, who threw his first two interceptions of the season last week, said it’s important to learn from what happened against the Vikings and to guard against letting bad feelings from that game linger.
“Don’t let one game define who we are,” he said. “It is early in the year we are still a really, really good football team and we are going to go out there and prove that. We have to learn from our mistakes but also, we can’t hold our head down and not learn from it and just start soaking in our own sorrow. So still keep the swag.”
Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence has lost eight consecutive starts and has thrown just two touchdown passes this season. But he was successful in his previous trip to Houston, with his most recent win coming in a 24-21 victory against the Texans on Nov. 26.
He remains positive that this team can turn things around despite its terrible start.
“Obviously we’re frustrated and the game the other night was just a disaster on pretty much every level,” he said. “But we still have the confidence in our group, our coaches, our team. That’s not going to change and that can’t change. I think that’s when you have problems, when you lose that confidence and start pointing fingers and there’s been none of that.”
Miller’s first start
With linebacker Foye Oluokun sidelined several weeks with a foot injury, second-year pro Ventrell Miller will make his first career start. A fourth-round draft pick from Florida in 2023, Miller missed all of last season after rupturing his Achilles tendon. He had a career-best six tackles after replacing Oluokun on Monday night but also had an interception slip through his fingers.
Clean it up
The Texans are focused on cleaning up their play after committing 23 penalties combined in their past two games.
“We spend time on that, talked about it,” coach DeMeco Ryans said. “We addressed it and we’ll see on Sunday that it’s been addressed and we’ll handle it really well.”
They had 11 penalties against the Vikings, with a whopping six coming from left tackle Laremy Tunsil. Three of his penalties were for illegal formation, raising the question if Ryans planned to practice with Tunsil on where to line up.
“He knows where to align, and we just have to do a better job of getting it done,” Ryans said.
Avoiding 0-4
Jacksonville is trying to avoid an 0-4 start, which is a seemingly insurmountable hole. Only one team in NFL history — the 1992 San Diego Chargers — made the playoffs after starting 0-4.
The Jags have been winless through four games five times previously and never finished with more than five wins in any of those seasons.
Running woes
The Texans led the NFL with 213 yards rushing in Week 1 behind a 159-yard game by Joe Mixon in his debut with the team. But he was injured early in the third quarter of their second game and Houston’s rushing game has gone downhill since.
The Texans had just 75 yards rushing against the Bears and managed a paltry 38 last week with Mixon still out with an ankle injury.
The team is also without Dameon Pierce, who has missed the past two games with a hamstring injury. Both Mixon and Pierce have remained out of practice this week and it’s unlikely that they can return Sunday.
That means Cam Akers needs to do much more than he did in his first start last week when he had nine carries for just 21 yards. Ryans was disappointed in the running game against the Vikings and said everyone on offense must pitch in to help get it back on track.
___
AP Sports Writer Mark Long contributed to this report.
___
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
