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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Houston +120 over Jacksonville 

9:30 AM EST. Football with your breakfast, and a market that has already changed its mind. Houston opened as the small favourite, Jacksonville is now laying 2½, and yes, the Jaguars' defense is the real deal, allowing just 14 points a game. But go back and look at how they won last week. They needed a 57-yard kick at the death to get past Philadelphia, they took 13 penalties, and they went 0-for-3 in the red zone. That is not a team taking care of business. That is a team surviving it, and there is a big difference when you are being asked to lay points with them.

Houston, for the first time all year, actually has something going. The Texans finally got in the win column by hammering Tennessee 26-3, C.J. Stroud is up to six touchdown passes without a single interception, and now Marvin Harrison Jr. makes his Houston debut, reunited with his old Ohio State quarterback. Add a healthy Nico Collins back into the mix and Will Anderson Jr. leading a defense that has piled up 10 sacks in its last three games, and this is easily the most complete version of the Texans we have seen. They are catching Jacksonville at precisely the wrong time for the Jaguars and precisely the right time for them.

The selling point for Jacksonville is that this is their second straight week in London, so they are supposedly the acclimated team, the team that treats this like a second home, and yes, they have handled the second leg of this trip before. Maybe that is all true. We just are not willing to pay to find out. These are young, star athletes with a lot of money in their pockets, living out of a hotel in another country, away from their families and away from every normal routine they have, with every enticement London has to offer sitting right outside the door. Are they locked in on football for two full weeks over there, tucked in early every night? We have no idea. Nobody does. And notice the price while everyone talks about all these built-in Jaguar advantages: if Jacksonville had that much going for it, why are they only laying 2½? That is the oddsmakers dangling the carrot in front of your face, inviting you to bite on the obvious, acclimated favorite. Buyer beware.

Houston has one win, no buzz, and is completely under the radar here, which is exactly how we like it. Seven of these two teams' combined 10 games have stayed under the total, so expect the usual London rock fight, decided by one possession late. In that kind of game we will take the points with the quarterback who is not turning the ball over, especially with Jacksonville sitting at 2-6 against the spread in the game before its bye and Houston at 4-1-1 against the spread in the second of back-to-back division games. The Texans winning this outright would not surprise us in the least.

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