Battling Bucs : The Age Gap

Lots has been made of the Steelers struggles so fat this season and I am certainly not the man to solve them as my talents assembling a football team are non-existent. It also doesn't help that most of the knowledge I do have a team construction in the world of sports is based in baseball and that is course not all that applicable to football. Still I can spot a problem when I see it.
Generally speaking football players tend to decline when they reach their 30s. There are of course exceptions to this and everyone declines differently but as a general rule of thumb once a player reaches 30 he is on the down side of his career. Conversely speaking a lot of young players take some time to truly adjust to the level of competition. Again there are exceptions of course but with the typical player coming in at age 21 or 22 it seems like a fair statement that how good that player truly is won't materialize until about 3 years into the league. So generally speaking what you are left with is a peak age for a football player of approximately 25-29 years old.
The Steelers have a solid collection of players in their 30 highlighted by Polamalu, Taylor, Clark, Keisel, Suisham, Roethlisberger and Miller. They also have an exciting collection of young talent. However what they are lacking is a big impact group in the 25-29 age range. There are currently 69 players on the Steelers roster counting the practice squad, IR, PUP and active roster lists. Of these 25 fall between 25 and 29 years of age. The group as a whole has far too many role players and not enough impact talent.
Defensive Backs: Curtis Brown, DaMon Cromartie-Smith, William Gay
Defensive Line: Al Woods, Ziggy Hood, Steve McLendon, Hebron Fangupo
Linebackers: Jason Worilds, Kion Wilson, LaMarr Woodley, Lawrence Timmons
Specialists: Zoltan Mesko
Offensive Line: Marcus Gilbert, Ramon Foster, Fernando Velasco, Cody Wallace
Running Backs: Felix Jones, LaRod Stephens-Howling, Isaac Redman
Tight Ends: Michael Palmer, David Johnson, Matt Spaeth
Wide Receivers: Derek Moye, Emmanuel Sanders, Antonio Brown
Approximately speaking that group should represent the majority of the Steelers core. Of course that really isn't the case. Amongst the defensive backs the Steelers have two bottom of the roster types in Brown and Cromartie-Smith and Gay who while he is often criticized is a solid yet replaceable backup corner. On the defensive line Fangupo and Woods have their uses in depth roles and Hood and McLendon are probably about average starters. The linebacker group does feature two prominent member of the core in Woodley and Timmons who both are capable are playing at a high level. The other two appears to consist of a backup in Worilds and a special teams ace in Wilson. So essentially on the defensive side of the ball in what should be the prime age group we have two very good LBs, some solid players and quite a few back of the roster types.
Looking at the offensive side of things as I'm going to ignore the punter the offensive lineman consists of Foster and Gilbert who coming into the year were probably considered the two weakest starting linemen on the team. Both are probably fringe starters at this point and would be better served in backup roles. Velasco was a nice pickup but again he isn't really star just a solid interior player. The last man Wallace appears to be at best a 8th or 9th linemen. In the stable of running backs Jones, Stephens-Howling and Redman all look like they could serve some sort of function but none is primary running back material. The tight end group consists of two fringy roster players in Palmer and Johnson and a good solid blocking tight end in Spaeth. On the receiver end we get our one true core member in Antonio Brown, a good complimentary player in Sanders and an interesting project in Moye.
Scanning through those 25 again I come up with 3 actual core players (Timmons, Woodley, A Brown), 8 bottom of the roster types (C Brown, Cromartie-Smith, Fangupo, Wilson, Wallace, Palmer, D Johnson, Moye) and 14 guys who are anywhere between a complimentary player and an average starter. You could make some arguments on whom I am classifying a bottom of the roster type and who I am counting as a role player but that is just really semantics. The real meat of the matter here is that only having 3 core players in this prime age group is a problem. The Steelers older players are ready to transition away from being the core and hand it off to the next group but the younger players aren't ready to take the reins yet and sitting in between the two is a group that doesn't have the necessary talent to be the core of a successful team. Cutting straight to the point the Steelers are facing an age gap in talent and the only ways to overcome it are to either defy father time for another year or to hope it all clicks for the youngsters. Neither strategy seems like a good bet to me.