The easiest path to the playoffs for the Jaguars is through the Texans

Right now the Jaguars are a 2-5 football team and deservedly so. Their 32nd ranked offense has struggled to points on the board and because of that, they've struggled to find wins. Expecting a playoff run from them would probably be irrational, but hey, we have all offseason to figure out what's wrong with the team. It's much more fun to be hopeful.

While it is certainly hypothetical and I'm probably getting ahead of myself, the Jaguars are far from eliminated from the playoffs as long as their division continues to play at the level it has. There's a winless team within the division and the leader is just a hair over .500.

Assuming that the wild card will be an extremely difficult position to secure in a conference that features eight teams over .500 in the three other divisions, the easiest and only realistic way for the Jaguars to make the playoffs is to win the division. The best way to do that would be to win all six of their divisional games.

Winning all six divisional games may seem like a heroic feat and one that is outrageous and unreasonable, but a closer look reveals its not so impossible. The most difficult step in the plan would be to sweep the division-leading Houston Texans. If the Jaguars are able to stifle the Texans offense enough to beat them both times this season, they would be set up for a playoffs run.

A pair of wins against the winless Colts and a second win against the Titans in week 16, a team the Jaguars beat in the season opener, would position the Jaguars as the power players in the AFC South. Those six wins, coupled with the 12-7 win on Monday night against the Ravens would give the Jaguars seven wins and tiebreakers against both the Titans and Texans.

A perfect 6-0 in divisional play doesn't necessarily mean playoffs, though. Just ask the 2010 Raiders who accomplished that, but went 2-8 outside of their division and found themselves on the outside looking in. For the Jaguars, they have four more games outside the division as they'll face the Browns, Chargers, Buccaneers and Falcons. Two wins against these four wouldn't be enough to hypoethetically clinch the division, but it would be enough to get to 9-7 and that could be enough.

Again this is all hypothetical and certainly hopeful, but the point is that the Jaguars, despite being 2-5, can begin to set themselves up for a playoffs run with a win on Sunday against the Texans.