Houston’s 20-12 victory over Miami on Sunday clinched the AFC South title and a playoff berth for the Texans. It all but ended the Dolphins’ chances of reaching the NFL postseason.

But Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa doesn’t expect his teammates to start making their offseason vacation plans just yet.

“I can tell you this team loves football,” Tagovailoa said after Sunday’s setback. “This team loves to play the game. We don’t take this game for granted. This is something that we all dreamed of playing when we were super, super young, and we’d watch prime-time games on TV, we’d watch our favorite teams play on TV. For us to say let’s go plan our trip to Cabo or let’s go plan a trip to Mexico, you really start to see the guys that want to be in the locker room, the guys that want to play for each other. I think that’s the guys we have in our locker room.”

The Dolphins have a 6-8 record, tied with the Indianapolis Colts and Cincinnati Bengals for the first teams on the outside of the current AFC postseason standings. At 9-5, the Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos need one win apiece to secure their postseason spots.

In the final wild-card spot, the Los Angeles Chargers are 8-6 after falling to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 40-17 on Sunday for their third loss in four games. But after playing the Broncos on Thursday night, the Chargers will end the season against the New England Patriots and Las Vegas Raiders, who have combined for five victories this season.

Tagovailoa completed 29-of-40 passes for 196 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions against Houston.

The Dolphins still had a chance when they got the football for the final time at their 23-yard line with 1:44 to play. But Tagovailoa’s long pass to wide receiver Tyreek Hill was intercepted by cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. Hill had the football in his hands when the players jumped for the pass, but Stingley had his second interception of the game when they hit the ground.

“It was just not a good ball,” Tagovailoa said. “Just got to throw it further down for Tyreek. That’s all it was.”

Tagovailoa hadn’t been intercepted in the previous four games and had a streak of 203 passes without an interception broken by the Texans, who picked off three of his final 21 passes on Sunday. Tagovailoa also lost a fumble when he was sacked by another former Alabama All-American, Will Anderson Jr., on Sunday.

“Plain and simple, just my fault,” Tagovailoa said. “I’ve got to protect the ball. I’ve got to play better ball for our guys, especially in a situation where the team is counting on me to go and drive our offense down to potentially tie the game up, and that’s not what I did. That’s not how you win games in this league.

“Very disappointed with how I played today and with how I conducted myself on the field, with our guys, with our team. I just need to be better in all aspects with that.”

Miami played without either of the offensive tackles who started last week’s 32-26 overtime victory against the New York Jets.

“I would say in a way, it altered it a little,” Tagovailoa said of Miami’s game plan. “But I would also say their defense had a good game plan for what we’ve been saying we wanted to do with the short game if we’re not able to get the run game going, with the short game being an extension of the run game.”

Dolphins wide receiver Jaylen Waddle went out in the second quarter with a knee injury, and Miami lost wide receiver Grant DuBose in the third quarter when he took a hit that sent him to the hospital.

RELATED: TUA TAGOVAILOA LAMENTS HIS ROLE IN GRANT DUBOSE’S ‘SCARY’ INJURY

“It’s tough when you lose any of your top receivers in a game like this,” Tagovailoa said, “when the stakes are high and you know a lot of the calls are pressure and they’re just running man. That’s when you count on your best guys to win their matchups.”

Tagovailoa completed 72.5 percent of his passes on Sunday to join Joe Montana as the only NFL players to complete at least 70 percent of their passes in eight consecutive games in a single season. Montana did so in 1989.

The Dolphins play the San Francisco 49ers at 3:25 p.m. CST Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, before completing their regular-season schedule with road games against the Cleveland Browns on Dec 29 and New York Jets on Jan. 5

FOR MORE OF AL.COM’S COVERAGE OF THE NFL, GO TO OUR NFL PAGE

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.