The Bills And Steelers Clinched Playoff Spots With The Titans Upsetting The Jaguars

While many teams figured to be scoreboard watching on Sunday afternoon, the Jacksonville Jaguars came into their game in Tennessee against the Titans knowing their playoff hopes rested solely on their shoulders. A win meant Jacksonville would win the AFC South and host a playoff game next weekend. A loss, and the Jaguars would be watching the playoffs on TV.

In theory, facing the 5-11 Titans shouldn’t have been that tall of an order, but this is the AFC South, where bad teams beat good teams regularly, and playing spoiler is more than enough motivation to show up and play hard in the last weekend of the season. Sure enough, the Titans jumped on the Jaguars early and after an early back-and-forth, Tennessee opened up a 28-13 lead. Jacksonville would claw back to within a score, and after a Ryan Tannehill pick set them up in plus territory, it seemed they might avoid an embarrassing loss.

Instead, things got even more embarrassing when they stalled out on the goal line, throwing the ball away on third and goal from the 1 and then Trevor Lawrence getting submarined trying to reach for the goal line on 4th down, coming up clearly short of the end zone.

After Tennessee worked some clock, they did eventually punt it back to the Jags with just over two minutes to play, but Jacksonville couldn’t get anything going offensively. Their season ended on a 4th and 2 airmail by Lawrence, and now they go into the offseason with a lot of questions about how they will proceed.

With the Jaguars loss, the afternoon window lost a bit of its drama, as the Bills officially clinched a playoff spot before they even took the field. They will still play Miami for the AFC East division crown, so there’s plenty on the line in the form of a home playoff game and the 2-seed in the AFC. The loss also clinched a playoff berth for the Steelers, who needed help after beating the Ravens on Saturday afternoon and got it from Tennessee. That puts them in the 7-seed in the AFC, meaning they’ll visit whichever team wins between the Dolphins and Bills in the afternoon window. The Texans, meanwhile, are now AFC South champs and will host the Browns next weekend, while the Chiefs will host the loser of Miami/Buffalo in what figures to be one of the primetime slots on Wild Card weekend.