Each Sunday, Bengals first-round draft pick Levi Jones talks about life as an NFL rookie.

We had a good holiday, me and my girlfriend. We picked up a little food. We had a big meal. I'm away from home, she's away from home, and so I tried to make her comfortable.

It's kind of a day of reflection. The last year has gone by so fast. I kind of sat down, ate, and I thought about all the steps leading up to this point, how the season's going.

I've had these nagging kinds of injuries. You have to play through pain. Coming from Arizona State, we had a saying: Are you injured, or are you hurt? You can play hurt. You can't play injured. Me, I've been hurting.

I've heard some things being said about my play in my seven starts. I don't worry too much about what people say. I just think about what I've got to get done and focus, whether they're saying good things or bad things. I'd rather hear bad things. It motivates me more.

Some of my coaches say I'm too hard on myself. That's my nature. Nobody can be harder on me than my mama and me. She calls me every week and tells me, "I don't want to see you give up a sack today."

We're going against another team today in the Ravens that I've seen before. Specifically, I'm going to see a lot of linebacker Peter Boulware. He's more of a dancer. He likes to make an offensive lineman move his feet and get him off balance and exploit him. I did a decent job against him last time, and hopefully I will again. I want to scale myself and grade myself and see how much I have improved.

I've always been more comfortable run-blocking. One of the injuries I sustained against the Ravens last time, the severely sprained big toe, it made it a lot harder to run-block. I think I did a real good job against Pittsburgh on the run, and hopefully I can get it healed.

The other adjustment is the weather. It has been cold the last three or four days. I played up at Washington State, which is probably as close to this cold. It's an adjustment, a big adjustment. But it's been real cold at practice the last few days. You warm up everywhere you are covered.

The arms, they get real cold, and you feel every shot you take. It starts to hurt more and more.

As told to Mark Curnutte

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