Jacksonville Jaguars, in front of a crowd of 83,764 at Wembley, recorded their first victory of the 2016 NFL season as they held off a fourth quarter charge from the Indianapolis Colts.

It improved the weekend for Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, who had watched his Fulham lose to QPR at Craven Cottage a day earlier.

Indianapolis paid millions of dollars to quarterback Andrew Luck, making him the game’s highest earning player, but they should have spent a bit more on the offensive line, which is supposed to protect him.

They did an awful job resulting in six sacks – the quarterback tackled for a loss of yardage – and Luck seemed to spend most of the day running for his life.

Luck was intercepted midway through the first quarter, by Yannick Ngakoue, on the Colts’ 25-yard line. It led to the Jaguars opening the scoring with a three-yard touchdown pass from Blake Bortles to Allen Robinson.

The extra point came from Jason Myers. The response came from another Jason, Vinatieri, who was kicking field goals for Amsterdam in NFL Europe in 1995. He kicked a 53-yard field goal.

In the second quarter, Vinatieri added a 50-yard field goal, but the Jaguars responded with a Bortles one-yard touchdown run and a 22-yard Myers field goal as the half ended.

Myers added two more field goals in the third quarter, from 46 and 49 yards, as the Colts misfired on offense and committed a number of penalties to keep Jacksonville’s scoring drives alive. That said, the Jaguars were flagged 11 times for 145 yards.

Trailing 23–6 at the start of the final quarter, Indianapolis started their comeback with a one-yard touchdown run by another NFL veteran, Frank Gore, the long-time San Francisco 49ers running back.

After forcing a punt when Jacksonville got the ball, Luk went back to work and threw his first touchdown pass of the afternoon, a two-yarder to T.Y. Hilton.

The lead now down to three points, but the Jaguars responded with a good drive, but took only two minutes off the clock before Bortles connected with Allen Hurns for a 42-yard touchdown pass.

Luck then completed the play of the game, to get the Colts back to a three-point deficit. He threw a perfect pass to Philip Dorsett, who caught the ball and did not stop running until he reached the endzone at the end of a 64-yard play.

There were still three minutes on the clock, an age in the NFL, and the Colts forced a punt from Jacksonville after they failed to get a single first down.

Now it was the turn of the Jaguars defense to step up and the Colts never came close to getting into field goal range to tie the game, let alone scoring a touchdown.