The Houston Texans host the Jacksonville Jaguars in a Week 4 AFC South showdown at NRG Stadium on Sunday

HOUSTON, Texas – The Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars will be eager to move on from last week’s tough losses when they meet in Houston on Sunday.

Houston opened the season with two wins before defeating Minnesota 34-7 in Week 3. The Jaguars are faring far worse, still winless and reeling from an embarrassing 47-10 loss to Buffalo on Monday night.

“Look, there’s going to be adversity in this league. They’re going to face this year in and year out,” Jacksonville coach Doug Pederson said. “But it’s a matter of how you recover from it and fight through it.”

Houston quarterback CJ 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 be wary of letting bad feelings arise from that game .

“Don’t let one game define who we are,” he said. “It’s still early in the year. We’re still a really, really good football team and we’re going to go out and prove it. We must learn from our mistakes, but we must also not hold back, not learn from them and just start drowning in our own grief, so keep the swag.

Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence has lost eight straight starts and has thrown just two touchdown passes this season. But he was successful in his previous trip to Houston, and his most recent victory was a 24-21 win over the Texans on November 26th.

He remains confident that this team can turn things around despite its terrible start.

“Of course we are frustrated and the game the other night was a disaster in almost every way,” he said. “But we still have confidence in our group, our coaches, our team. That won’t change and that can’t change. I think that’s when you’re struggling, when you lose confidence and start pointing fingers, and there’s none of that.”

Miller’s first start

After linebacker Foye Oluokun was sidelined for several weeks with a foot injury, second-year pro Ventrell Miller is making his first career start. Miller, a fourth-round draft pick out of Florida in 2023, missed all of last season after tearing his Achilles tendon. He had a career-best six tackles after replacing Oluokun on Monday night, but also had an interception fumble.

Clean it up

The Texans are focused on improving their game after committing 23 penalties combined in the last two games.

“We’ve looked into it and talked about it,” coach DeMeco Ryans said. “We have addressed it and on Sunday we will see that it has been addressed and we will handle it really well.”

They received eleven penalties against the Vikings, six of which were by left tackle Laremy Tunsil. Three of his penalties involved an illegal line-up, raising the question of whether Ryans intended to practice with Tunsil on where to line up.

“He knows where to connect and we just have to do a better job,” Ryans said.

Avoid 0-4

Jacksonville is trying to avoid an 0-4 start that presents a seemingly insurmountable hole. Only one team in NFL history – the 1992 San Diego Chargers – made the playoffs with a 0-4 start.

The Jags have been winless in four games five times previously and have never won more than five times in any of those seasons.

Running problems

The Texans led the NFL with 213 yards rushing in Week 1, behind a 159-yard game from 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 went downhill ever since.

The Texans had rushed for just 75 yards against the Bears and managed a paltry 38 yards last week while Mixon was still sidelined with an ankle injury.

The team will also be without Tank Dell, who is dealing with a pectoral injury, and Dameon Pierce, who has missed the last two games with a hamstring injury. Both Mixon and Pierce did not practice this week and are unlikely to be able to return on Sunday.

That means Cam Akers will have to do a lot more than he did in his first start last week, when he had nine carries for just 21 yards. Ryans was disappointed with the current game against the Vikings and said everyone on offense needs to pitch in to get back on track.