Texans savor a thrilling London win, but coach DeMeco Ryans says the climb is just starting

HOUSTON (AP) — The Houston Texans returned from London feeling great after getting a thrilling win over Jacksonville this weekend.

But the Texans (2-4) still have a lot of work to do if they hope to dig out of the hole created by dropping their first four games this season.

Coach DeMeco Ryans is proud of how his team battled through its early season adversity and expects the guys to continue to work to turn things around.

“You’re going to have difficult moments, but that one moment doesn’t define you,” he said. “It’s all about how you respond to it and I love the response that our team has given us ... I love where our team is right now.”

On Sunday, the Jaguars tied the game late on a 60-yard field goal by Cam Little. C.J. Stroud then orchestrated a drive to set up Ka’imi Fairbairn’s 49-yard field goal as time expired to give the Texans t he 34-31 win at Wembley Stadium.

It was an impressive win for a team that had coughed up leads late in the fourth quarter in three of its four losses.

“It’s always great for us to close games out,” Ryans said. “We stumbled along there early in the season when we didn’t finish games, but we found a way (Sunday) to continue to play complementary football, all three phases, really having an impact on this game.”

The Texans got a boost with the addition of receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., who made his debut after last week’s trade from Arizona. The fourth overall pick in the 2024 draft had three receptions for 34 yards in limited action.

The trade reunited him with Stroud after the two played together at Ohio State.

“It felt like old times and I’m proud of him, happy for him,” Stroud said. “I thought he looked great, looked like he was excited to be out there. And we’ll get him more touches and more plays here in the season.”

Though he threw his first interception of the season on Sunday, Stroud continues to play exceptionally well. He was 24 of 34 for 312 yards with a season-high three touchdown passes.

He ranks second in the NFL with 1,714 yards passing this season and leads the NFL with 25 completions of at least 20 yards. He has done a great job of spreading the ball around and completed passes to 10 different players against Jacksonville.

“C.J. has been hot all year and he’s still hot,” Ryans said. “He’s lighting it up. He’s dishing the ball around to a lot of different people, doesn’t matter who it is. Everybody who has an opportunity, they’re open, they’re getting the football.”

Houston’s normally fearsome pass rush led by defensive ends Will Anderson Jr., who leads the NFL with 7 ½ sacks, and Danielle Hunter was shut down on Sunday. The Texans entered the game with 18 sacks but were unable to get to Trevor Lawrence once.

RB Jawhar Jordan and TE Foster Moreau.

Jordan was promoted from the practice squad this week to fill in for David Montgomery, who is out with a groin injury. He had six carries for 43 yards and his first career TD run gave the Texans a 31-21 lead late in the third quarter.

Moreau, who is in his eighth NFL season and first with the Texans, scored on both of his catches on Sunday. It was his first career game with multiple touchdowns and he became the first Houston tight end to score two touchdowns in a game since Jordan Akins in 2023.

DE Jadeveon Clowney was flagged for defensive offside in the second quarter and the Texans were penalized for 12 men on the field later in the quarter when he didn’t run off quickly enough.

Ryans said Monday that WR Tank Dell will play this week after sitting out since suffering a gruesome knee injury in December 2024. … Montgomery will likely be out again this week. … S Reed Blankenship sustained a concussion against the Jaguars. … S Jalen Pitre missed the game with a shoulder injury.

216 — The number of pass attempts Stroud had this season without an interception before Travis Hunter picked him off in the end zone with about four minutes remaining Sunday. It was the longest streak without an interception to start a season in franchise history.

The Texans will try and stretch their winning streak to three games before their bye when they host the NFC East-leading New York Giants (3-2-1) on Sunday.

See AP’s full NFL coverage here

Houston Texans running back Jawhar Jordan (25) runs in to score a touchdown during an NFL football game against Jacksonville Jaguars in London, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Houston Texans tight end Foster Moreau (87) celebrates after scoring the first touchdown during an NFL football game against Jacksonville Jaguars in London, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Ian Walton)

Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans smiles as he leaves the field after an NFL football game against Jacksonville Jaguars in London, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud (7) makes a pass during an NFL football game against Jacksonville Jaguars in London, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Ian Walton)

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry bounced back on Wall Street Monday and recovered some of their steep losses from last week, but the rest of the market and stocks worldwide were shaky.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4%, coming off its worst week since June, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 1.1% because it’s full of technology stocks. The majority of U.S. stocks outside of AI and tech fell, though, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average swung between losses and gains before finishing with a drop of 36 points, or 0.1%.

In Europe, the losses were sharper, and indexes slid more than 1% following violent protests that could ultimately force the French government to increase its spending to ease voters’ anger. That in turn could put even more pressure on bond markets, and yields cranked higher worldwide.

Even with all the cross currents flowing through financial markets, AI stocks stood out, as they have for most of the past few years. A frenzy in spending for AI technology has forced them to the forefront of the market, sending them to record prices and driving indexes higher. Last week, AI stocks grabbed the spotlight after tumbling on worries about how expensive it has become to borrow money, which could threaten the boom.

Much of the spending on AI chips and data centers has come from borrowed money, and Treasury yields in the bond market have recently hit their highest levels in years or even decades. That has raised the cost of borrowing money for everyone.

Nvidia added 1.4% Monday and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. Because it’s the largest stock on Wall Street by total market value, a 1% move for its stock has more effect on the index than any other’s.

SpaceX, which controls the xAI business, rose 1.3% to $147.96. Its founder, Elon Musk, pledged on Monday to give one share of SpaceX to “every kid in America” next year. The offer came after Anthropic said over the weekend that it will commit 5% of the shares in its highly anticipated initial public offering of stock to a new “public benefit” fund.

The moves for AI stocks were still choppy, though. Consider CoreWeave, a company that’s borrowed to buy AI chips that it rents out to customers over the cloud and has been at the center of the market’s swings. After initially jumping more than 7% in the morning, it flipped to a loss of 3.5% before finishing with a dip of 0.4%. That followed its loss last week of 25.2%.

The swings came ahead of profit reports coming later in the week that could offer more details about the strength of AI-related spending.

Meta Platforms, which is pushing its Muse AI agent, will report its latest quarterly results on Wednesday. Lam Research, which supplies equipment and services for the making of semiconductors, will also talk about how its business is doing on Wednesday.

Expectations are high across the board for U.S. companies’ profits from the summer. Analysts are forecasting overall growth of 29% for companies in the S&P 500 from the prior summer, according to FactSet. Those high expectations are what has allowed the U.S. stock market to run to records despite worries about war, high inflation and pressure from the bond market.

Cleveland-Cliffs rallied 16.3% after reporting a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Lourenco Goncalves said it was the strongest quarter for the company in three years and that the outlook for profit in 2027 “has improved materially” from three months ago.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 31.29 points to 7,690.73. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 36.38 to 51,966.03, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 290.85 to 26,430.89.

In stock markets abroad, rebounds for AI stocks helped South Korea’s Kospi jump 1.8% to recover some of its 14.5% drop from last week. It is dominated by two huge players in the AI industry, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which has made it much jumpier than other markets.

In Europe, bond yields climbed following the French protests against the rising cost of living and poor school conditions. The protests could put pressure on governments to boost their spending to offer help, but that would likely only add to their already big piles of debt.

Yields rose for French bonds on worries about the government’s already strained budget and climbed much more than yields for German government bonds, which investors have historically seen as a safer bet.

In the U.S. bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 5.14% from 5.09% late Friday. It topped 5.30% earlier this month and touched its highest level since 2002.

Oil prices remained shaky. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, swung between $107 and $110 through the day before settling at $109.55, down 0.3%.

It has been yo-yoing between $97 and $110 this month on uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow the energy industry to return to normal.

AP Business Writer Chan Ho-him contributed to this report.

FILE - A general view of the New York Stock Exchange is seen, Aug. 7, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader talks on the phone at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)