The Pittsburgh Steelers will host the Houston Texans in the Wild Card round of the playoffs on Monday night Jan. 12th according to the NFL’s announcement during NBC’s broadcast of Sunday Night Football.
The Texans locked themselves into the No. 5 seed with a narrow win over the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday afternoon. The Steelers locked up the No. 4 seed by beating the Baltimore Ravens in a winner takes all game on Sunday Night Football.
Of the six games on Super Wild Card Weekend, just one matchup happens on Monday night. The Steelers will play host to that matchup after playing on Sunday Night Football in the final game of the regular season.
The Steelers didn’t back into the playoffs as they did in 2024, but they had a bad loss in Week 17 to set up a dramatic Week 18 game against Baltimore. Now they will host the hottest team in football. The Texans are riding into the playoffs on a streak of nine wins, powered by the best defense in the league.
Houston’s defense has allowed just 277.2 yards per game as the top ranked total defense and 17.4 points per game as the No. 2 scoring defense. The Steelers will have their hands full trying to overcome arguably the NFL’s best unit on either side of the ball. They will at least be doing so with the return of DK Metcalf, who was suspended for the final two games of the regular season for an altercation with a fan in Detroit.
Pittsburgh hasn’t hosted a playoff game since the 2020 season when they lost to Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns 48 to 37. The Steelers will also be looking to finally overcome their drought of playoff wins that spans back to the 2016 season.
The Texans have won at home in each of the last two Wild Card rounds. They have never been on the road in the first round of the playoffs before, but are 0-6 on the road in the playoffs in franchise history.