Oakland Raiders

Raiders No. 1 draft pick Rolando McClain told his hometown paper in Alabama that he is not planning to hold out, which is not news but always nice to hear. The inside linebacker is being picked by some ESPN experts and some of the preseason magazines hitting the shelves to be the defensive rookie of the year (and why not, he could be on the field a lot).

While it's hard to take a lot from no-pads practices in May and June -- Oakland has three more this week starting Tuesday, with the media welcome on Wednesday -- McClain has definitely looked the part of an impact player. His main job will be to stuff the run and adjust the defense to what he sees the offense doing before the snap. He is a thumper and he is smart -- any concerns over his pass-coverage skills are ill-founded as that takes time and teammates' help on the field before a rookie gets a feel for it.

"He can help us a lot," cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha told Comcast's Greg Papa. "He can help us against the run -- he's a bigger guy that can stuff fullbacks in the hole before they even get started.

"He's a smart guy, an athletic guy ... so that's going to help us out in the passing game. ... It's very early for him. Training camp can always be difficult for a rookie, so there's going to be a learning curve."

There is a great track record for Southeastern Conference linebackers taken in the first round of the NFL draft. You learn your craft in the most physical conference in the college football, you're in pretty good shape -- especially like in McClain's case, if you were one of the leaders on a national championship-winning team.

In no particular order, here are some of the SEC linebackers drafted high over the last 20 years: Derrick Thomas, Cornelius Bennett, Patrick Willis, Takeo Spikes, Jerod Mayo, John Abraham, Al Wilson ... Georgia's David Pollack would have also been a good one but had to retire from the Bengals due to vertebrae issues.

ALSO: Due to popular demand, I am going to start tweeting from practice on Wednesday. I was going to wait until training camp because again, I think football without pads and hitting is a little like 9 1/2 weeks without Kim Bassinger. Darren McFadden is the best running back in the world if there were no pads, and I will be tweeting all of his 25-yards runs starting Wednesday. ... There was a recent story about how good tackle Mario Henderson looked, but that was after a pratice of mostly 7-on-7 drills ... with no pads. C'mon people. Have we set the bar so low that the offensive line gets a thumbs up if no quarterbacks get maimed in May?