As sports fans, we love rivalries. We love epic clashes between legendary players or prominent teams, clashes we only see once or twice a year. In the NFL, the face of most rivalries like that are franchise quarterbacks. The gold standard for over a decade earlier this century was Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning. More recently, I’d say Patrick Mahomes has a little something going with Joe Burrow and maybe Josh Allen.
Honestly, the NFL could use some fresh rivalries at the quarterback position, and that’s why the clash this past Sunday between Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence and our own C.J. Stroud, a 24-21 thriller that ended with both quarterbacks throwing for over 300 yards and Texans kicker Matt Ammendola boinking a 58-yard, game tying field goal attempt off the cross bar, is so exciting for the future of the NFL.
In Lawrence, you have a reputed “generational QB prospect” and former No. 1 overall pick. In Stroud, you have the best rookie quarterback to come into the league in a decade and a dark horse MVP candidate 11 games into his career. They both score big in the “it factor” department. They are fun to watch, and easy to root for.
Beyond all that, the best part of this burgeoning saga is that they are in the same division, which means we are guaranteed this matchup twice per year, and maybe in the postseason, too! I think it’s fair to say this is something we’ve never had in the AFC South — a marquee quarterback rivalry that fans all over the NFL will carve out time on Sunday and go out of their way to watch.
If we go back and look at the history of the AFC South, which was created in 2002 when the Texans were born into the NFL, we’ve only come close to having a big time QB rivalry once or twice in the history of the division. Here is my “back of the cocktail napkin” chronology:
2002 thru 2010
This was the last nine seasons of Peyton Manning’s reign of terror in Indianapolis. The closest flash we had to a marquee QB rivalry was the first couple seasons of Vince Young in Tennessee, but that didn’t last.
2011 thru 2012
Manning sat out all of 2011 with a neck injury, which led to the drafting of wunderkind Andrew Luck in 2012. These were the two best seasons in Texans history, skippered by Matt Schaub, who was a nice quarterback, but not really a marquee name.
2013 thru 2015
In 2013, Schaub slid into the toilet under a sea of pick sixes, which led to two seasons of Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Hoyer, and Ryan Mallett. Jacksonville and Tennessee were just as jacked up at quarterback. Luck was the only signal caller worth a damn during these three seasons.
2016
This was the season where Luck started to break down physically. The Texans won the division with Brock Osweiler under center. That tells you all you need to know about the QB situations in the division, which included Marcus Mariota in Tennessee and Blake Bortles in Jacksonville.
2017
Andrew Luck was out for the season, Deshaun Watson burst on the scene for seven games as a rookie, while Jacksonville won the division with Blake Bortles as their quarterback. So, yeah.
2018
This season represented the best hope for a divisional franchise QB rivalry, with Year 2 of Deshaun Watson and a physically repaired Andrew Luck. The two teams split the regular season games, and the Colts pst the Texans in the wild card round of the playoffs. Watson vs Luck had legs, until…..
2019 thru 2020
….Andrew Luck up and retired during the preseason. This left us with Deshaun Watson versus Ryan Tannehill as the best QB matchup for the next two seasons. It wasn’t “back to square one,” but you could see square one from here. 2020 would end with the Texans at 4-12, and Watson requesting a trade six weeks before the lawsuits began flying.
2021
Trevor Lawrence arrived as a rookie but was saddled with Urban Meyer as his head coach. Ryan Tannehill won the division again. In Houston, the Davis Mills Era had begun.
2022
Trevor Lawrence’s career was fished out of the fire by Doug Pederson, and by the time the Jaguars started winning, Lawrence’s biggest divisional game, a division clincher, saw Josh Dobbs as Tennessee’s starting quarterback.
2023
If you’ve managed to survive this trip down memory lane without vomiting on your mobile device, good for you! You earned the next several years of Trevor Lawrence battling with C.J. Stroud. This is going to be a helluva lot of fun!
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
