Kovacevic: These Steelers will ride nowhere without a functional O-line

Mason Cole goes through a drill at practice Thursday on the South Side.On a rural stretch of the straight-line, flat-line I-71 highway that connects Columbus to Cincinnati, there's forever been a handmade billboard blaring the message, 'HELL IS REAL,' presumably in recognition of Marvin Lewis' two decades of meritorious service to the art of bad football at the far end of the route.

And there've been trips, I'll admit, where it's felt prescient on a lot of levels, ranging from Vontaze Burfict's raging persona and Pacman Jones' raging intellect, to fans raining beer bottles on Ben Roethlisberger while on a medical cart, to a sentiment that Marcus Gilbert once magnificently summed up as, 'Man,…