Fairbairn's Last-Second Field Goal Lifts Texans Past Jaguars 34-31 in London

The Houston Texans beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 34-31 at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, when kicker Ka'imi Fairbairn drilled a 49-yard field goal as time expired to cap a back-and-forth Week 6 game that the final box score shows went to the final play. The result was just the Jaguars' second loss of the season and pulled Houston back into the thick of the AFC South, a division the Texans had dominated for two seasons before an 0-4 start this fall.

Jaguars kicker Cam Little had forced the extra possession just two minutes earlier, tying the score at 31 with a 60-yard field goal, his fourth make of 50 yards or longer this season. Houston then needed only four plays to put Fairbairn in position, and his kick split the uprights as the clock in London's largest stadium hit zero.

The numbers

Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud finished 24 of 34 for 312 yards and three touchdowns, with one interception that set up Jacksonville's late rally. Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence matched him statistically, going 24 of 41 for 306 yards and four touchdowns, though he also threw an early interception that was returned by Houston safety Calen Bullock after a Jacksonville holding penalty had already erased a touchdown on the same drive.

Jacksonville rookie cornerback-receiver Travis Hunter had a hand in both of the Jaguars' two most consequential plays. He intercepted Stroud near the goal line in the fourth quarter, then caught a touchdown pass from Lawrence on offense in the same half, a two-way contribution that is rare even for a player the Jaguars have used on both sides of the ball since drafting him second overall out of Colorado. Houston receiver Jaylin Noel had the biggest individual night on either side, catching four passes for 107 yards and the go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter. Tight end Foster Moreau scored twice for Houston, including a touchdown with seconds left in the first half that gave the Texans a 17-14 lead at the break.

Houston outscored Jacksonville 14-7 in the third quarter to open a 31-21 cushion, before the Jaguars scored 10 unanswered points in the fourth to force the final sequence.

How Houston got back in the race

The win was Houston's second straight after a winless start that had the two-time reigning AFC South champions at the bottom of the division through four weeks. The Texans beat Tennessee 26-3 in Week 5 before traveling to London for the franchise's first international game since 2019, when Houston also beat Jacksonville at Wembley. Sunday's trip was part of a league-wide push that has sent nine games to seven countries this season, under a schedule the league released last spring, and it marked the stadium's latest turn hosting American football; Wembley has staged NFL games regularly since 2007.

Houston arrived with a new weapon. The Texans had acquired receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. from Arizona earlier in October, reuniting him with Stroud, his former Ohio State teammate, and he made his Houston debut in London, catching three passes. Receiver Nico Collins, who has anchored Houston's passing game through the losing stretch, had told reporters covering the team's departure for London that the overseas assignment carried its own appeal apart from the won-loss record.

"It's kind of dope to just go overseas and play football, it's kind of fire," Collins said.

Who is affected

Jacksonville had entered the game 4-1 and in sole possession of the AFC South lead, coming off a win over Philadelphia the previous week. The loss drops the Jaguars to 4-2 and tightens a division race that Houston has now re-entered at 2-4, still four games back of the pace the Texans set during their first two seasons under coach DeMeco Ryans but no longer buried. For Jacksonville, the defeat is the first sign this season that its offense, which had been efficient in the red zone, can be undone by turnovers at the wrong moments; Lawrence's early interception erased points on a possession that began with a penalty-nullified touchdown, a sequence that cost the Jaguars at least seven points they would have badly wanted in a three-point final margin.

For Houston, the win validates a roster overhaul made under pressure. Ryans and general manager Nick Caserio had absorbed criticism for the 0-4 start despite the team's recent playoff pedigree, and the trade for Harrison was widely read as a signal that the front office still believed in the season. A second straight win, on a stage the league treats as a showcase, gives that bet an early return. Detailed stat lines from the game show Houston's rushing attack, led by Woody Marks and Jawhar Jordan, also contributed, with Jordan breaking off a 25-yard touchdown run that briefly extended the Texans' lead in the third quarter.

What happens next

Both teams now fly back over the Atlantic for the stretch run of the first half of the season, with 11 games left apiece. Houston, still working out from under its early-season hole, tries to build on consecutive wins against divisional competition that no longer looks unreachable. Jacksonville keeps its grip on first place in the AFC South but does so for the first time this season with a loss attached to its record, a result that, by accounts of the game's final minutes, turned on a sequence no coach wants to leave to a kicking duel: a tying 60-yard field goal, followed four plays later by a 49-yard answer as time ran out.

The margin between the two AFC South rivals is now a single game, and both coaching staffs will spend the coming week treating Sunday's result as a game that was always going to be judged as much on its final possession as on anything that came before it.