The Tennessee Titans aren’t exactly putting their best foot forward against the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday Night Football.
According to the Titans Wire, the Titans will start quarterback Josh Dobbs over Malik Willis in Week 17.
The Titans going with Dobbs over Willis has implications with the Jacksonville Jaguars’ tilt with the Houston Texans on Sunday at NRG Stadium.
Although Jaguars coach Doug Pederson extols the virtues of how NFL games are never meaningless, even though he benched Jalen Hurts down three with 12:35 to go in the fourth quarter for Nate Sudfeld in a game that allowed Washington to beat the Philadelphia Eagles and win the NFC East (the New York Giants, the Eagles’ historic rivals, were division winners if Washington lost), the series conclusion between the Jaguars and Texans is meaningless as it relates to playoff qualification. As Adam Stites from the Jaguars Wire explained, a win over the Titans is all Jacksonville needs to win the AFC South. The Jaguars can tie with the Texans after 70 minutes of futility Sunday afternoon.
Tennessee sees the same situation. Why go all out to beat the Cowboys (even though it would extend their streak over Dallas to two, matching 1997-2000) when the real showdown is in Week 18 against the Jaguars? And Tennessee is the team that could use an end to their losing streak and find a little positive momentum to take into a play-in game.
Why would the Jaguars need to put everything on tape against the Texans they are going to whip out against the Titans when the division title is on the line? Why risk some players’ injury and availability just to snap a losing streak against a hapless franchise?
The collateral damage to come out of Week 17 could be the Texans’ draft positioning as another win would move the Chicago Bears into the No. 1 overall slot, pending the Monsters of the Midway lose again.
