What’s wrong with the AFC South quarterbacks right now?

The state of quarterback play in the AFC South is a bit chaotic right now. The four starting quarterbacks have talent, but they’re all coming off dreadful performances in a week that was reminiscent of the days when the AFC South was the doormat of the NFL.

We’ve seen all of these guys play well. For the Colts, Andrew Luck has had moments when he resembled an elite quarterback. Marcus Mariota had an explosive start to his Titans career. Deshaun Watson looked like a superstar during his rookie season with the Texans. Blake Bortles put together a decent enough season to help the Jaguars get to the AFC Championship game last year.

There’s currently a three-way tie for first place in the division, with the Titans, Jaguars, and Texans all sitting at 3-3 so far (the Colts are last with a 1-5 record). In the immediate future, all four quarterbacks need to raise their level of play as the playoff race heats up. But two of them need to do it for their long-term future, as well.

His last performance: Blake Bortles had a stinker performance against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 6. He threw for 149 yards, a touchdown, and an interception on 26 attempts. He finished with a passer rating of 70.8 and was sacked three times.

Bortles ran himself out of clean pockets all game long, making reckless plays in the passing game.

Here, he runs straight out of a clean pocket and flips the ball to Dede Westbrook.

This followed a five-turnover game against the Chiefs in Week 5. Bortles looks like he’s playing without a plan right now.

What to expect from him the rest of the season: Bortles doesn’t exactly have the toughest test of pass defenses throughout the rest of the season. Jacksonville still has two games left against the Colts, two games against the Texans, and a game at home against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

With the natural regression that the defense has taken, Bortles needs to step up so the Jaguars can retake command of the AFC South.

We have seen Bortles play well between this year and last year, particularly against the New England Patriots and New York Jets earlier in the season when he threw for a combined 764 yards and six touchdowns. So it is possible for him to have enough strong performances to get Jacksonville back into the playoffs.

The main problem is Blake Bortles is Blake Bortles — he’s far too inconsistent to be counted on as a serious offensive contributor. It’s impossible to tell which Bortles is going to show up at any given moment.

If it’s the same Bortles we saw in the Cowboys game, it’s going to be a long season for Jaguars fans.

His long-term future with the team: The tricky situation with the Jaguars is trying to figure out what their plan of action needs to be at quarterback in the offseason. They can release Bortles without much cost in 2020, but he is responsible for more than 10 percent of the Jaguars’ cap in 2019.

His play makes that number hard to justify. Jacksonville has dropped from 14th to 25th in adjusted net yards per attempt and it’ll continue to trend down as long as Bortles struggles.

The problem with a long-term investment in Bortles is that his peak might not be good enough to get the Jaguars over the hump. Bortles wasn’t the issue in the AFC Championship loss the Patriots, but even the coaching staff showed they didn’t completely trust him when they opted to kneel out the clock before halftime with timeouts in their back pocket.

But the lows of Bortles — like throwing four picks against the Chiefs’ last-ranked defense — can completely nuke an offense. Bortles’ contract makes it difficult for Jacksonville to move on after the season, but the team can look to the draft to start preparing for the future.

His last performance: The Titans joined the Buffalo Bills and Arizona Cardinals as the only teams to get shut out this season in their 21-0 beatdown at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens. Marcus Mariota was sacked *11* times for 66 lost sack yards — that paired with his 117 passing yards left the Titans with just 51 net passing yards for the day. That’s comically bad considering the passing explosion in the NFL this year.

Whenever a team takes such a high number of sacks, there’s room to spread the blame. The Titans’ scheme hurt them, the offensive line was faulty, and Mariota walked himself into a couple of sacks.

What to expect from him the rest of the season: The Titans’ passing game ranks 30th in adjusted net yards per pass attempt with just 4.5 yards — above only the Cardinals (4.1) and the Bills (2.0). That has to be disappointing for a team with a new coach, new offensive coordinator, a former No. 2 pick at quarterback, a top-five pick at receiver, and a two first-round picks on the offensive line.

Tennessee has a big challenge this week against the Los Angeles Chargers and their rapidly improving defense. The Chargers have allowed 24 total points over their last two games and their secondary, led by Derwin James and Casey Hayward, is starting to gel. Outside of the Chargers, Mariota will have to face the Cowboys, Patriots, Jets, and Jaguars.

The Titans probably won’t be held to zero points again this season, but with the direction their passing game is headed, they likely won’t be lighting up the scoreboard either.

His long-term future with the team: Mariota has shown flashes of great talent, particularly in 2015 and 2016, but he’s really struggled over the past season and a half, with 15 touchdowns to 19 interceptions over his past 20 regular season games. It might not be time for a split between Mariota and Tennessee, but it’s could be going in that direction once his contract is up after 2019.

Moving forward, it’s difficult to project where Mariota’s career might end up. He’s been a below-average quarterback since his sensational 2016 season when he threw 26 touchdowns to only nine interceptions. It hasn’t helped that Mariota has been banged up with injuries throughout his entire career and has been playing with nerve damage in his right hand this season.

He could recover and be the Titans’ long-term answer at the quarterback position, but considering the extreme variances in play that he’s shown it’s hard to be too confident in either direction.

His last performance: The stat lines that Andrew Luck produces are interesting, especially in his first season back from a shoulder injury that caused him to miss all of last year. Luck currently leads the NFL in attempts with 288, putting him on pace to set the NFL record with 768 attempts. He’s just not getting a lot out of his pass attempts.

In Week 6 against the New York Jets, Luck had another heavy workload. He completed 23 of his 43 pass attempts for 301 yards, four touchdowns, and three interceptions. While the first part of that looks decent, the interceptions came at inopportune times.

Luck had a screen pass intercepted on the first drive of the game that ended in a pick-six, threw another interception to Avery Williamson when the Colts were down 17-13, and had a rough interception thrown right into the hands of Darron Lee when the Colts were down 36-27.

What to expect from him the rest of the season: Luck’s game against the Jets followed his theme for the entire season. He’s thrown a hell of a lot of passes, but he’s not producing much with them. Despite leading the league in pass attempts, Luck ranks 32nd out of 34 qualifying passers with a yards per attempt of just 6.2.

That’s not all his fault — Indianapolis doesn’t have the horses at receiver right now, especially with T.Y. Hilton dealing with a nagging hamstring injury. Luck’s targets have had five drops in each of their last three games. Even Luck’s pick-six against the Jets was because the ball went off Marlon Mack’s hands.

But Luck is also playing super-conservative football right now. It’s still a little too early to tell whether it’s Frank Reich’s scheme or Luck’s shoulder turning him into a short-game passer, but the Colts are going to need to get a lot more out of their passing game if they want to get back in the AFC South race.

His long-term future with the team: Two games left against Jacksonville and Tennessee will won’t be easy on Luck or the Colts, but this passing game does look correctable in the near future.

The Colts aren’t in a situation where they can move on from Luck even if they wanted to, which they don’t. His contract is hard to cut until the 2020 offseason, but he has played some elite football for them in the past. This might just be a situation where they load up the supporting cast with great players and try again next year. At least they’re projected to have $125.8 million dollars in cap space at the start of the offseason.

His last performance: Deshaun Watson had a brutal performance against the Bills. Watson was sacked seven times, threw two interceptions, and fumbled three times in a 20-13 win — a win that the Texans defense had to put into their own hands.

Not all of Watson’s fumbling issues can be on the Texans’ offensive line. Yes, they do struggle to block ... everybody, but Watson also runs himself into bad plays.

Take this sack by Lorenzo Alexander. He blows past by the right tackle and makes it Watson before he can even scan the field. Sometimes a play is just over and it’s time to move on to the next down, but Watson tries to stand strong through having a defensive end around his knees and fumbles the ball in his extra effort.

Watson also had an awful interception in the red zone when the Texans were driving. He did a great job of evading the sack by a Bills defender and beelined towards the sideline. This is where everything fell apart for him on the play — instead of just throwing it out of bounds and making the safe play, Watson threw it back across his body into the lap of Jordan Poyer.

It was third down with a minute left before halftime, if he had just played it safe the Texans could’ve had a field goal attempt to go up 13-0 at the half.

Watson’s day was outdone only by Nathan Peterman, who stepped in for the injured Josh Allen during the third quarter. Peterman threw two interceptions in the final 90 seconds of game time, one pick-six, to give the Texans a win.

What to expect from him the rest of the season: Watson and the Texans have the most promising future outlook at the quarterback position in the AFC South. Watson just turned 23 and has largely been fantastic for the Texans outside of their Week 1 and Week 6 games.

They still have two games against the Jaguars, one against the Titans, and another against the Browns and their vastly improved defense. The challenges will be there for the Texans. But with the talent they have at wide receiver, they’ll be able to compete with anyone as long as Watson is upright.

The first in-season task the Texans need to attempt to patch up is amount of punishment Watson takes. Houston leads the league in quarterback hits by far and Watson has a reckless style of play.

Improving their offensive line will be difficult to do at this point in the season. All they can really do is try to take baby steps with the players they have and hope Watson can get through the season healthy.

His long-term future with the team: Watson does need to take better care of his body and be mindful of the punishment he takes, but his production as the Texans quarterback has been undeniable.

With No. 1 receiver DeAndre Hopkins locked up for the long term, Houston should continue to have an offense capable of making explosive plays — all they need to do is fix their woeful red zone offense.