Shock spread through the NFL on Thursday afternoon as the news of Deshaun Watson's torn ACL set in. One of the best and most fun stories in the league this season, Watson was coming off a tough but thrilling loss in Seattle and literally hours earlier had been named AFC Offensive Player of the Month for October.

The Houston Texans are just 3-4, but their brilliant rookie quarterback was a reason to think they had a fine chance to run down the 4-3 Tennessee Titans and the 4-3 Jacksonville Jaguars to claim a third straight division crown.

Now? Well, it's not over for Houston, but it's going to be a lot tougher. Watson's 19 touchdown passes are the most ever by a player in his first seven NFL games. Tom Savage, who replaces him as the starter, has never thrown an NFL touchdown pass.

The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook dropped the Texans' Super Bowl odds from 40-1 to 100-1 in the wake of Watson's injury, and their odds of winning the AFC dropped from 20-1 to 50-1. The Jaguars, meanwhile, went from 50-1 to 40-1 for the Super Bowl and from 25-1 to 20-1 for the AFC.

The Watson injury matters, and combined with the unsurprising news Thursday that the Indianapolis Colts aren't getting Andrew Luck back this year, it might well reduce the AFC South to a two-team race between Jacksonville and Tennessee.

That would be somewhat historic. This is only the 16th season that there has been an AFC South, and in 13 of the previous 15 it was won by either the Colts or Texans. The Titans won it in 2002 and 2008. The Jaguars' last division title was the 1999 AFC Central.

The Jags and Titans are both coming off Week 8 byes. ESPN Stats & Info tells us the Jaguars have the league's easiest remaining schedule and the Titans have the eighth-easiest -- a discrepancy that could be offset if the Jaguars' run-and-play-defense formula falters at any point and requires them to ever ask anything significant of quarterback Blake Bortles.

The Titans' toughest remaining games are at Pittsburgh and home against the Rams. The Jaguars' toughest remaining games are home games against the Seahawks and Chargers. Tennessee won in Jacksonville in Week 2 and hosts the Jags on New Year's Eve in the season finale. That game could decide the South.

Of course, it's possible that Houston is still a factor. Savage was the team’s Week 1 starter, so it's not as if they have to use someone in whom they don't believe in. Only three of their final nine games are against teams that currently have winning records, including one each against those aforementioned division rivals ahead of them in the standings.

Going from Watson to Savage costs the Texans mobility at the position and the ability to extend plays, which was a big factor in Watson's success so far. But Savage does have arm talent, and with Will Fuller back healthy at wide receiver along with DeAndre Hopkins the Texans can keep up their aggressive downfield ways.

But losses add up, and this is already a team playing without injured front-seven defensive stars J.J. Watt and Whitney Mercilus. Watson wasn't just a pleasant surprise, he was a transformative superstar who elevated the offense from maybe-good-enough to top-of-the-league-brilliant. Without him, the Texans will not be the same. What remains to be seen is whether they can be good enough to scrape ahead of Jacksonville and Tennessee and claim what has lately been the least glamorous spot in the NFL playoff field.

When you put it like that, it doesn't sound impossible. But without Watson, the AFC South race sure has lost a lot of its luster.