Welcome to The Terrible Take, a daily segment telling Steeler Nation what's on our minds.

I'm Melanie Friedlander.

Heading into Wild Card Weekend, there have been some uneven matchups.

Sometimes the team with the wildcard berth has a much better record than the team that won their division and the right to host a playoff game on home turf.

That is true of the Texans and Steelers. The Texans have a record of 12 and

5, starting the year with a rocky three-game losing streak and finishing the regular season with

nine consecutive wins. The Steelers clinched the AFC North with a 10-and-7 record, edging past the

Ravens in the final seconds of week 18. The Texans are favored to win, as we know, and for good reasons,

which we have dissected endlessly in the past week. But there are intangible differences that

cannot be factored into vague odds, and the Steelers may have an advantage in one of those aspects.

I'm talking about age. Although we hear all the time about how the Steelers' defense is so old, it's not that glaring of a gap.

Based on each team's roster for the playoffs, the Texans have an average age of 26 years and six months.

The Steelers, with an average age only 10 months more, do bring the oldest roster to the playoffs.

The same is true for team captains. The Texans have five captains

raging at age from 24 to 31, with an average age of 26.6 years old. The Steelers' original four

captains had an average age of 35 and a quarter. Swapping out Miles Kilibrew, who is now on

IR, for Peyton Wilson, who assumed his role, the average age only

drops to 33.5 years. Take away Aaron Rogers and Cam Hayward, and the two teams would be a lot

closer for average roster age and the captains as well. But don't take them away. These two players

may very well be the difference that Vegas cannot calculate.

Anyone who saw the embrace that Rogers and Hayward shared following the victory over the Ravens should understand that.

That moment made clear the battle they had just fought as part of a brotherhood with a mutual understanding of the cost and the stakes.

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