The NFL playoffs are in full swing, as the wild card round rages on and the league is narrowed down to just eight teams that can win the Super Bowl. Wild Card Weekend will wrap up on Monday night with an AFC battle between the Steelers and the Texans.
The Steelers just barely snuck into the playoffs with a dramatic Week 18 win over the Baltimore Ravens in Week 18, winning the AFC North on a missed Tyler Loop field goal with no time remaining. On the other side, the Texans have been cruising toward the postseason for a few months now, and made the field comfortably despite not being able to catch the Jacksonville Jaguars for the division title.
On paper, Houston has the better record and the better roster, but the Steelers are at home as a division champ. Despite that advantage, it could be tough sledding for Aaron Rodgers and company against a very good Texans defense.
Texans are elite at defending short passes
Aaron Rodgers has had a bit of a resurgence in 2025, playing his best football since his days with the Packers to lead Pittsburgh to the playoffs. However, he is still pretty contact-averse at his age, and that has become more apparent since suffering a broken left wrist earlier in the season.
This season, Rodgers has the fastest time to throw in the entire NFL at 2.59 seconds, sitting ahead of Tua Tagovailoa. As a result of this, Rodgers is able to avoid the pressure that a lot of defenses try to bring at him, but it also means that the Steelers rely a lot on short passes to move the ball. His 5.9 air yards per attempt is the shortest in the league by a wide margin according to Next Gen Stats.
This season, Rodgers has 10 touchdowns and one interception on those short passes, defined as throws inside of 10 yards. The Steelers have been successful on those plays in part because they rank second in the NFL in yards after catch and first in yards after catch over expected.
Unfortunately for the Steelers, the Texans have completely dominated opposing offenses that have tried to dink-and-dunk them so far this season. Against short passes, Houston is allowing -0.30 EPA per play, the best mark in the league and a full tenth of a point ahead of second place. The Texans' ability to swarm to the football on those plays is unmatched, which should eat up all of the Steelers' opportunities to create bigger plays on those short throws.
Rodgers also likes to target his running backs, Jaylen Warren and Kenneth Gainwell, on those short passes. Both Warren and Gainwell have had excellent seasons, in part because Rodgers has relied on them in the passing game so much. However, Houston will have answers for that too.
In the regular season, the Texans boasted the third-best EPA per play allowed on backfield targets, trailing only the Buffalo Bills and Minnesota Vikings. When that narrows down to short passes to running backs out of the backfield, Houston has the best mark in the league by a wide margin at -0.29 EPA per play.
If the Steelers are going to find some answers against this Houston defense, it's not going to come in the ways that they have traditionally been winning on their way to the postseason.
Can the Steelers find other ways to attack?
If the short passes aren't working, it is going to be hard for the Steelers to find answers that they can consistently go to against the Houston defense. Pittsburgh has had very little success throwing the ball past 10 yards this season, ranking in the bottom 10 in the league on both intermediate and deep passes. The Steelers' wideouts, even though they are getting DK Metcalf back this week after his two-game suspension, are not the kinds of players that will scare DeMeco Ryans and company.
Houston has two elite cornerbacks in Derek Stingley Jr. and Kamari Lassiter, both of whom are capable of shutting Metcalf down and preventing the explosive plays that he can create. Outside of that, it's going to be hard to rely on Adam Thielen and Marquez Valdes-Scantling to create those plays.
One other way the Steelers can help make those short passes more effective is by running the ball well on early downs, giving Rodgers the ability to throw short on late downs and still move the sticks. The Steelers do rank fourth in the NFL in rushing success rate, but they have struggled to generate explosive plays on the ground this season.
Houston's run defense isn't quite as good as its pass defense, in part due to a relative weakness at defensive tackle, but this is still a top-10 unit on the ground. The Texans are one of five teams to allow less than one yard before contact on run plays this season, so it should be tough sledding for Pittsburgh in that department as well.
