Jacksonville Jaguars Inside Slant

The Jaguars will play a game Sunday for stakes they weren't expected to play this season. They'll probably be playing for a playoff berth when they host the Miami Dolphins.

Coming off a 5-11 season, the Jaguars are 7-5 and will have a good shot at getting in the playoffs if they knock off the 6-6 Dolphins regardless of what they do against the Colts and Patriots the next two weeks because they go to Cleveland for the season finale.

They have a good chance to make the playoffs at 9-7 if they beat the Dolphins because they have a one-game lead on the Dolphins, Steelers, Jets and Ravens, all 6-6 entering Week 14. Since the Steelers play the Ravens, barring a tie one will lose their seventh game.

The Jaguars also are likely to win tie-breakers with a better conference record. They're 6-2 now and likely would finish 8-4 against the AFC.

But if Dolphins beat the Jaguars, they would own the tie-breaker and could keep the Jaguars out of the playoffs by beating the Titans, Texans and Steelers in their last three games.

The Jaguars started out 0-2 but have fought back to win seven of their last 10 games despite their standing as the only top-12 team that has given up more points than they have scored.

"I think we've collectively battled, worked, and committed to this organization, to this football team and to being all that we can be to win," coach Jack Del Rio said of the club coming back from a slow start. "It hasn't worked every time out but we've been able to put together seven good efforts, seven winning efforts. Guys have been committed. I've spoken to the commitment level, the energy level, the willingness to work. The staff's working hard. It's a very unselfish group and I just think that we continue to kind of grind away at it and persevere and I think a collection of men can accomplish special things when they don't care about credit, and they're willing to work the way these guys have."

Asked if the team has improved in recent weeks, Del Rio said, "We played better defense (against the Texans) than we have in a while. We've eliminated the long runs defensively really since the Tennessee game where we just didn't tackle well. We've really been pretty stout all year in terms of being able to keep people slowed down against the run. But I think the biggest difference is you start to feel a little more rush, a little more coverage in rush going hand and hand and hopefully we can get that going down the stretch and we're going to need it.

"You've got to play well on third down, you've got to be able to get off the field, you've got to limit your exposure with some of these really good offenses. And this team coming in this week converts at a real high rate. They do it running the ball a lot but they still they convert at a really high rate and possess the ball a lot so we'll have our own set of challenges going forward."

This is only the fourth regular season game these two Florida teams have played, but the teams usually play in the preseason and many of the players know each other.

"We all know each other because we hang out at the same places. It's like a best friend brawl. We've got to keep fighting until somebody gives us,'' Maurice Jones-Drew said.

SERIES HISTORY: 4th regular-season meeting. Jaguars lead series 2-1. They also won the only playoff game the teams have played, 62-7 in 1999 that turned out to be the last game for Dolphins QB Dan Marino and coach Jimmy Johnson. The Jaguars have had just one playoff win since then. The Jaguars beat the Dolphins 24-10 in 2008. The teams are familiar with each other because they've played seven years in a row in the preseason.