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

Rough season, and it's turned into a very long season. I don't think I'm hitting the wall. I think losing like this is taking a lot out of me.

We were .500 at least every year at Arizona State, except my senior season when we were 4-7. We were always 6-5 in high school.

The only way to put the losing out of my mind is to go out and play as hard as I can every game, game by game. I try to build for the future by bettering myself every way I can.

You get better by taking everything in. I use it as fuel that this isn't what this team needs to be next year. We have to look at it - especially me as a rookie - I'm trying to get as many snaps as I can to learn as much as I can. Next year when I come in, I want to have seen it all before. Then I can work at being a dominant left tackle.

If there is something that needs to be said next year, I'm sure I'll say it. But I'm still sure there are going to be a lot of people I can't tell stuff to. Leadership has always been a part of what I've done for teams. And I'm sure it will be that way here in the next few years. Next year? I don't know. It will give me a little more room to say a little more next year.

I know I've learned a lot this year. I know I'm getting better with every snap I get under my belt. It's learning more about me. It's learning what different guys are going to try to do to me, what they're watching me do on film. It's taught me to prepare myself a lot better for games.

In my eight starts, I've given up six sacks. I've got every last one of them in my head. I can tell you what I did wrong. Most of the stuff was mental breakdowns. It wasn't like I got outright beat on any one of them. It was me putting myself in a bad position to allow them to do that. I haven't gotten out-muscled or out-worked. If I don't have a mental breakdown, I don't have a sack right now. If I don't do something wrong, I keep everybody at bay.

Sunday, I get Mike Rucker at Carolina. He's a good defender. They've got a good defense, a hard-playing defense like Pittsburgh's. It's another chance to learn and get better.

As told to Mark Curnutte

Return to Bengals front page...