Column: Le’Veon lifts Steelers to next level

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Pittsburgh Steelers v Tennessee Titans

Le’Veon Bell tiptoes through the Titans’ front seven for some of his 204 yards Monday. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The offensive lineman in football is at the epicenter of it all. He doesn’t just experience each play. He feels it. He doesn’t just execute each play. He understands how every cog contributed.

Be sure, then, that Ramon Foster felt every fantastic facet of Le’Veon Bell’s 33-carry, 204-yard burst onto the national scene Monday night in the Steelers’ otherwise tepid 27-24 tipping of the Titans at LP Field.

“That young man was just an engine,” as the effervescent guard would put it, “an absolutely unstoppable engine.”

Asked to elaborate, Foster added, “There’s just this sense that you get when it’s clicking, this feel between an offense and a running back. You build confidence. You get a little cocky. You get on a roll. You’re pushing, not retreating. It’s …”

He smiled broadly.

“It’s a blast, man.”

“That’s energy,” Maurkice Pouncey chimed in from the next stall. “That just makes you want to go to the next snap and get up on the guys again and see if you can do it again. It was awesome, man.”

No doubt. So be even surer that Tennessee’s defenders felt it, as well.

“Those guys were … ” Foster spoke before pausing to turn his right shoulder in a cringing motion, as if cowering from the bogeyman. “Let’s just say that once Le’Veon made it to the second level, they’d had just about enough of him.”

Which is funny, because here’s betting that, as of this special night, neither Pittsburgh nor the NFL will be able to get enough of this extraordinary talent.

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Wow, what a mess this team remains.

Yeah, they’re 7-4 to lead the AFC North in victories, and they control their destiny as much as that’s possible with a month and change left. And yeah, they did win this one. Lest we forget, they’re actually more prone to losing these.

“Monday night AFC road wins is big ball for us,” Mike Tomlin said, and he had every right. “We were down by 11, and we had an opportunity to bounce back, and I think anytime you can do that and gain victory, you can grow from it.”

Roll your eyes if you must, but show me the coach who pans his players after a W, and I’ll show you … well, no one. Because no coach does that. It’s dumb.

Still, just between us, let’s rewind back to that harsher reality of trailing a 2-8 team by 24-13 entering the fourth quarter and staring in the face a season on the brink. Give Tennessee due credit, in particular old friends Ken Whisenhunt and Ray Horton for a defensive scheme that at least stunted the Steelers for a while. But beyond that, there’s nowhere, again, for Tomlin and staff to hide in preparing their players for a far lesser foe. Ben Roethlisberger was sacked five times, largely of his own doing, and was picked off in the end zone before straightening out. The offense went field goal, field goal and that pick on its first three forays into the red zone. Willie Gay opened the first defensive series with a pick-6 but would give it right back by hideously biting forward on an 80-yard touchdown by another old friend, Nate Washington. The defensive line, the linebackers, the secondary — pretty much everyone on that side of the ball save for the ageless Brett Keisel — had awful spells.

For three quarters, it looked like Jets, Bucs, Raiders, Vikings, all wrapped into one, except that this one was happening, oddly, with so much more on the line.

“It was not a perfect night,” Tomlin acknowledged. “We’ve got some things to work on during the bye week, obviously.”

Obviously. And just as obviously …

“I’d say this is good timing for the bye week,” Roethlisberger said.

The Steelers could use more than the recalibration. The 13 days between now and when the Saints march into Heinz Field also will allow some or all of the missing one-third of the defense to return. Tomlin wouldn’t speculate after the game, but none of Troy Polamalu, Ryan Shazier, Steve McLendon, even Ike Taylor can be ruled out. The only one certain to not be ready is Jarvis Jones, and he isn’t about to start over James Harrison, anyway. It should make a difference, as we’re now seeing some of their substitutes being badly exposed.

The team also could use the break to address Monday’s most unfortunate sidelight, with LeGarrette Blount egregiously leaving the field late in the game in an apparent pout over having zero carries to that point.

I’ve had no use for Blount ever since his initial influence on Bell resulted in both being arrested for marijuana possession this summer. Blount had a troubled history. Bell didn’t. Doesn’t take Batman to figure out which was the kettle and which was the, uh, pot.

But this is different. There aren’t many sins in organized sport greater than quitting on one’s team. Do that in the heat of a close contest, with your positional partner out on the field running his heart out, and that descends to some infinitely lower level.

I’ll be blunt on Blount: He’s got to go. Preferably as soon as the charter touches down at Pittsburgh International, assuming he made the flight.

The Steelers deserve better. And specifically, Bell deserves better. There’s no need for him to be connected to this clown one day longer than necessary.

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Bell has risen above, not only that scene but also everyone around him except for Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown. And honestly, I’m not sure how much longer he’ll stay third in that hierarchy.

“We don’t have enough time to talk about what he did tonight,” Roethlisberger said.

In this stadium, the former home of the Tennessee great Eddie George, the back most reminiscent of what Bell brings as a triple threat — rusher, receiver, blocker — Bell performed all of those to near perfection. His 200-yard performance was only the fifth in franchise history — Willie Parker’s 233 yards in 2006 stands as the record — and his carries and yards were both career highs, he caught two passes for 18 yards, including a late, critical first down over the middle. But above all, he pounded and pounded and pounded the Titans, who could never come up with an answer for the elephant wrecking their living room.

“We tried a lot of different things,” Whisenhunt said. “Give them credit. They’ve got a good running back, he got rolling, and we couldn’t make a play.”

“It was very frustrating,” defensive tackle Jurrell Casey said.

That this output followed Bell being held to 50 total yards the previous two games — much more because the Steelers fell behind early and had to air it out — only enhanced that.

Check out the broader scope even when weighing those two blanks:

• Bell is currently at 951 yards, topping his 860 as a rookie. He trails only the Cowboys’ DeMarco Murray, although Murray has 49 more carries. His 57 catches are second among backs to the Bears’ Matt Forte, who has 67:

• His 57 catches this season already are a franchise record, topping John L. Williams’ 51 in 1994.

• His 1,811 rushing yards through his first two seasons — and this one with five games to go — are the most in franchise history. Second on that list: Franco Harris, with 1,753 in 1972-73.

• In the one that blows me away, Bell’s 2,694 yards from scrimmage through his first two seasons make him the Steelers’ most productive non-quarterback in that category by a huge margin: Mike Wallace had 2,100, Louis Lipps 2,081, Harris 2,002 and Santonio Holmes 1,796.

That’s special, my friends. We’re seeing something special.

And don’t think for a second all concerned on the inside don’t realize it, too.

Early last week, maybe in a bid to keep Bell from getting down about those 50 yards in the previous two games — wouldn’t want him, you know, storming out or anything — Todd Haley approached Bell to ask for a numerical goal for this week. Everyone was aware Tennessee ranked 29th in run defense, and the Steelers made no secret of their wish to exploit that.

Bell’s response: “150. I’ll take 150.”

“We all heard about that,” Marcus Gilbert would say Monday night. “We believed it, too.”

Then they made it happen. Together.

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What’s scariest about Bell, if you will, is that he genuinely has room to improve. He’s not a complete product as a running back or as a person.

On the latter front, Tomlin remains tough on him — this goes back well before the marijuana arrest — and even after this game chose his words carefully when I asked the coach to describe Bell’s evening: “I’m not going to say anything about Le’Veon I haven’t said before. He’s a good, young player. He wants to be a central reason why we’re successful.”

OK, but know that somewhere in there Tomlin and Kevin Colbert — both rightfully roasted over recent drafts — have to be enjoying this as much as anyone. A lot of folks, myself included, preferred Eddie Lacy in that draft. We all look silly now.

And no one right now looks better than Bell. Or even sounds better.

A reporter asked him how many carries he could have taken on this night, knowing his iron-man history at Michigan State and seeing how he never tired here.

“How many would it take for us to win?” Bell came back.

“So 40? 45?” the reporter kept prodding.

“Whatever number it would take for us to win.”

When the press conference ended, as us reporter types began to file out, Bell grinned and spoke into the microphone, “Here we go, Steelers!”

Still feeling it, apparently.