Ravens' Gooden: Hurricanes' 'Minds Are So High Above Everybody Else'

The NFL season is less than five weeks away, and today FanHouse is at Ravens training camp -- Stop 2 and mile 270 of Dan Graziano's five-camp, 1,100-mile road trip.

WESTMINSTER, Md. -- Pressure? Nerves? Just because Tavares Gooden is expected to take over free-agent defector Bart Scott's spot at Ravens inside linebacker next to Ray Lewis? No way, says Gooden. Running with the first team in practice isn't about pressure or nerves. It's about great big holes to run through.

"You hear noises that make you think you're watching an army movie -- Haloti Ngata crashing into guys and stuff like that," Gooden said Sunday after the Ravens wrapped up their afternoon practice at McDaniel College. "And then you've got those holes and those openings, and you just fill them as a linebacker. I think that's the biggest part of being with the 'ones.' Everybody knows their assignments, and all you have to do is play off that D-line."

There's a chance that Gooden, the second-year linebacker out of Miami, isn't up to this -- that he doesn't yet have what it takes to replace Scott. There's even a chance, technically, that Jameel McClain beats him out for the starting job. But you wouldn't know about those possibilities from talking to Gooden. He's loaded with confidence. He is, after all, a Hurricane.

"At the University of Miami, before you can even hit somebody, you have to pass your conditioning test," Gooden said. "It's all mental there. Once you get your mind into it, you can do anything. That's what they instill in us. That's why us guys, with the god-given ability, really explode. Our minds are so high above everybody else. We're looking to do things that people haven't done. They brainwash us at the University of Miami to believe we're the best, and that's how we play."

The best part is that Gooden has a support system here for that confidence. He's one of four Hurricanes on the Ravens' roster, along with Lewis, safety Ed Reed and running back Willis McGahee, who backs up Gooden's school pride.

"We separate ourselves from the other guys," McGahee said. "We were NFLU when I was in school. We lost two games the whole time I was there -- my first game and my last game. The expectations are different."

So being a starting linebacker for the Ravens, with all that goes along with that, is nothing Gooden isn't expecting of himself. Especially with Lewis right there to help him.

"Ray is doing everything he can," Gooden said. "He's not just saying 'I'm going to be in Canton, so I can relax.' He's showing us. He's teaching us the way, how to play defense like a Raven."

· McGahee said he feels healthy and is in top shape, but he's getting a challenge from second-year running back Ray Rice. The Ravens are working hard with Rice on his pass-catching, and there's some thought that he could be the primary back. It's likely that the Ravens will be run-oriented enough that there will be plenty of carries for McGahee, Rice and the beefy Le'Ron McClain, but McGahee sounds skeptical.

"I hope so," he said. "That's the way it looks like it should work. But in football, you never know how it's going to go."

McClain led the team in rushing yards (902) and carries (232) last year. McGahee got 671 yards on 170 carries in 13 games, and Rice picked up 454 yards on 107 carries in his 13 games.

· Something fun seems to happen every day at Ravens camp. Last week, Snoop Dogg showed up for a day. Saturday, coach John Harbaugh announced that if rookie kicker Graham Gano made his final field goal of the morning, he would cancel the afternoon practice. (Gano made the pressure-packed 36-yarder.) And on Sunday, as the team was getting ready to run scout team kick-coverage drills, a crew of U.S. Marines who'd spent the past few days in camp being tutored on football ran onto the field to replace the Ravens players. The Marines donned blue and yellow caps and ran the kick-coverage drills.

"Now, those guys are all 175 pounds or less, right? So they play pretty fast football," Harbaugh said. "They were here to learn football, so we made them earn their meals. They had to run down on the kickoff team, just to honor what they're doing, really. We appreciate having them here."

· I spent time after practice talking with Ravens QB Joe Flacco about why he's not worried about a sophomore slump. You can read about that here tomorrow morning.

· Next stop on the tour is Latrobe, Pa. Should take about 3 1/2 hours to drive from here, and I'll be there Monday to check in on the Super Bowl champion Steelers.