After a few rough seasons, the Houston Texans are back to being the best team in the AFC South. They shockingly won the division in 2023 during DeMeco Ryans' first year as the head coach and C.J. Stroud's rookie year, not only winning the AFC South but recording a playoff victory as well.
This year it appears that the AFC South is the Texans' division to lose and that's looked to be the case through the first quarter of the season. Unfortunately, the Jacksonville Jaguars' poor performance through the first month could lead them to be in a position to land six-time Super Bowl champion head coach Bill Belichick this offseason and that'd be bad news for Houston.
Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated's Monday Morning Quarterback said while appearing on The Dan Patrick Show that he could see the Jags firing Doug Pederson if they're still winless coming back from London in a few weeks. From there, he speculated that the Jaguars would have an interim head coach run the show for the rest of the year and then Jacksonville could potentially target Belichick.
.@AlbertBreer says he could see the #Jaguars making a change at Head Coach if they come back from London 0-7.
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) October 2, 2024
He thinks they'd name an interim Head Coach to finish the season and perhaps tab Bill Belichick for next year. pic.twitter.com/4PArPNkUSf
Jaguars landing Bill Belichick would be worst-case scenario for Texans
Now, yes, Belichick's final few years in New England didn't go great. The Patriots posted three losing seasons in Belichick's final four years in New England (aka the post-Tom Brady era) but the one winning season resulted in a playoff appearance where Mac Jones was the quarterback. Belichick was able to coach a team with Jones as the starting quarterback to the playoffs.
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Even when he still had Brady, Belichick deserves plenty of the credit for helping the Patriots get to nine Super Bowls and winning six of them. He's a very defensive-minded guy, so he'd whip that Jaguars defense into shape and they'd be an aggressive bunch moving forward. He'd also do his best to find someone who could help transform Trevor Lawrence into the player everyone thought he'd be (Josh McDaniels comes back to be an offensive coordinator and help Lawrence revamp his career) so that'd be another thing to worry about with Belichick running the show in Jacksonville.
The fact of the matter is that the Jaguars haven't been a very competent franchise in recent years and Belichick would immediately change that. This is a move that Texans fans should hope doesn't happen because it's funnier when the Jaguars aren't good. Hopefully, they continue to let Doug Pederson do his thing thinking it'll get better and miss out on adding Belichick.