Le’Veon Bell bursts through the offensive line and around Carolina’s Luke Kuechly Sunday night. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Perhaps it’s the patience of a strong safety, perhaps it’s his passion for introspection, but Troy Polamalu can be counted upon to be the last to leave the Steelers’ locker room, home or road, win or lose. Most often, he’ll sit at his stall silently. He’ll listen. He’ll learn.

And once he’s channeled it all, like some multi-gigabyte processor, what comes out is a powerfully honest, studied, broad-scope assessment.

So the best way, I’ve found, to get the fullest feel for this football team, even on a night when nearly everything goes above and beyond as it did in the 37-19 thrashing of the Panthers on this prime-time Sunday night at Bank of America Stadium, is to wait out the mane man.

Without asking the first syllable of my first question, then, I motioned over to Ike Taylor’s empty stall, and Polamalu began.

“The strength of our organization has always been, I believe, in our closeness, the way that we’ll stand up for one another.”

Long Troy-like pause.

“It’s a touchy business. We all want to be the guy. We all want to be out there. But we’re all ready to step in when it’s our opportunity. And the best way to look out for your brother is to step in there when he goes down.”

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Ben Roethlisberger is crushed by the Ravens’ Courtney Upshaw on Thursday in Baltimore. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Marcus Gilbert allowed Elvis Dumervil to get around him. And to go right through him.

But on this day, the Steelers’ right tackle wasn’t allowing anything to slip by.

He stood in the locker room and faced wave after wave of cameras, microphones and reporters with pointed questions about his perfectly miserable performance Thursday in the 26-6 loss at Baltimore. The room was open to media access for a half-hour, and he was at his stall answering for 25 minutes of it.

“You’re out there for 60-some snaps, and you have those two plays … it’s frustrating. It is,” Gilbert was saying with the first of those waves. “You can’t take those back. But you can’t give them up, either. I know I’ve got to be better. And I will be.”

He’d better be.

Because it isn’t just those two plays. Gilbert allowed two sacks in the opener against the Browns, as well. That total of four ties him with the Redskins’ Tyler Polumbus for most in the NFL by a tackle — left or right — with only two other players, the Cowboys’ Doug Free and the Packers’ Derek Sherrod, having as many as three. Add the two QB hurries Gilbert’s given up, and you’re now easily quantifying the worst offensive lineman in the league.

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Ike Taylor covers the Panthers’ Kelvin Benjamin in a preseason game last month at Heinz Field. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Well, ‘Hm-hah!’ as the late, great Myron Cope used to exclaim.

What did we witness at the Steelers’ Monday practice, their first since being obliterated on both sides of the ball in Baltimore, other than defensive players performing the rough equivalent of calculus majors learning to work an abacus?

“We tackled,” defensive lineman Cam Thomas was telling me, almost by way of confession, afterward at his stall. “That was pretty much it. We worked on our footwork, our leverage and …”

And tackling. Honest to Mean Joe, Jack and Dobre Shunka. They worked on tackling.

Not that this should either surprise or disappoint anyone. If anything, it’s an infinitely more commendable response to the rancid work Thursday against the Ravens — 16 missed tackles, just two tackles for losses, zero sacks, zero turnovers, 157 yards rushing against — than how Mike Tomlin thoroughly dismissed my question on that count after that game.

Remember that?

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The Ravens’ C.J. Mosley recovers a Heath Miller fumble in the fourth quarter Thursday night. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

BALTIMORE — On one especially stomach-turning sequence in the Steelers’ sad, sad 26-6 loss to the Ravens on Thursday night — and hey, good luck plucking out just one from the menu offered by this mess — Troy Polamalu, Ike Taylor and Ryan Shazier all whiffed on exquisite chances to take down Steve Smith.

Check that. It wasn’t a sequence. It was a play.

It was all on the very same play that Polamalu was spun around like a rookie, then Taylor either grabbed onto air or was gasping for air, depending on the perspective, then Shazier managed to match both by actually being a rookie and being beaten like one. It wound up a 23-yard yard gain that would set the stage for a second-quarter Baltimore field goal and a 10-point lead that felt like about a billion.

And it all occurred, in case I neglected to mention it, on one play.

As easy as 1-2-3 following the first flick of a domino.

All night long, too.

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The Giants’ John Mara and the Steelers’ Art Rooney II leave a meeting together in Minneapolis in May 2011. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Roger Goodell isn’t on the verge of being disgraced.

He’s already disgraced.

Let’s get that much straight right now, no matter how dulled it might be inside his deluded head.

He’s already lost all but the official title of NFL commissioner.

He’s already done more damage to “the shield,” as he often refers to the league’s iconic logo in the context of protecting its image, than the Saints’ Bountygate, the Patriots’ Spygate and all of James Harrison’s collisions combined, simply by virtue of being a salaciously bad commissioner.

And now a scandalously bad one, on top of that.

This one won’t go away. It just won’t. It can’t.

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

To dispense with this right off the top: Neither the Steelers nor the Browns experienced anything especially transformational at halftime Sunday.

“Nope,” Willie Gay was saying shortly after the home side’s finishing kick prevailed, 30-27, at Heinz Field. “Just another halftime. We came out ready. We were ready to play.”

Brian Hoyer’s view from the locker room down the Hall: “I think people realized there were 30 minutes of football to play, and we just decided as a team to go out and give it everything we got.”

Heady stuff, huh?

And those guys weren’t alone in that sentiment on either end. Player after player was asked about halftime, about a possible speech here or letdown there, and player after player came back Knute-free, narrative-free.

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