The first thing you notice is his neck. It is as broad as a tree stump, with raw tendons as thick as bulky suspension bridge cables bulging from the base of his ears, then swirling down around his Adam's apple before finally disappearing into his broad shoulder blades. Ask James Laurinaitis how he got his abnormally big neck and he instinctively chuckles.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," said the rookie linebacker, rolling his eyes in amusement. "Believe it or not, I didn't do anything to get it like this. No special exercises. That's all genetics. When your dad is a pro wrestler and your mom is a power lifter, this is the kind of neck you get. I had no choice, really."

This is what you might call a Central Casting-issued middle linebacker's neck. It happens to be attached to a Central Casting-issued middle linebacker's body, too. At 6 feet 2, 244 pounds, the Rams' second-round draft pick (35th overall) out of Ohio State is no bulky, undersized fireplug. He represents the official end of the string of too many undersized linebackers who were the staple of far too many Rams defenses over the last decade. Laurinaitis is a tall athlete who is quick enough to run you down from sideline to sideline, or drop 15 yards into coverage to track down a receiver. But he is also a big, strong man who should not be run over if he drops into the fray to fill a gap on run plays.

On this particular afternoon as the perspiration streams nonstop down his head, you can see the stark evidence that Laurinaitis' famous neck — and the rest of his body for that matter — has just endured another healthy dose of exhausting two-a-days at Rams Park. The neck and the Popeye-like forearms are decorated with bright red welts.

These are the professional marks of distinction for the 22-year-old recent college graduate whose new business address is in the middle of the very turbulent intersection of a nonstop train wreck, and all hell is breaking loose. Just before the snap of the ball, Laurinaitis crouches into a deep knee bend, his hands resting on his thighs, his head popping up barely over the broad backs of those beefy defensive linemen.

At the snap of the ball, the chaos ensues. Giant offensive linemen fire off the line of scrimmage, giant defensive linemen meet them in a thunderous body slam, and Laurinaitis disappears briefly in the commotion. But if your eyes follow the ball, you will find him soon enough.

On one particular play during Friday night's scrimmage at Lindenwood, a running back barrels into the scrum, and before long you see Laurinaitis pile-driving at the point of attack, clogging the brief sliver of daylight before Kenneth Darby can gain 2 yards.

On another play — a pass intended for tight end Randy McMichael — Laurinaitis goes into a smooth back-pedal, makes a quick body turn and rides McMichael's hip like a shadow for 20 yards. At just the right moment, the young linebacker instinctively turns his head at the split second the ball arrives into the deep seam and McMichael and Laurinaitis both go tumbling to the ground as the ball bounces harmlessly to the artificial turf.

For the time being, Laurinaitis is running primarily with the second-unit defense. Before the snap of the ball, he is moving younger, inexperienced players around like chess pieces, barking out signals, waving his hands and shouting out adjustments at the first sight of motion from the offensive side of the ball.

His body language on the field gives off the aura of confidence and even a little bit of authority, which is exactly what you want in a middle linebacker. That is no accident. That is by design and exhaustive studying of a thick defensive playbook that he is still in the process of memorizing. Sooner or later, Laurinaitis knows that he will be expected to be the middle linebacker with the first unit, and he will be expected to bark out signals to grown men who have been in the NFL five, six or 12 years.

Not every NFL rookie has what it takes to handle this task. Some of the lucky ones get to quietly learn the ropes without much leadership responsibility. But when you're expected to become the primary signal caller on offense or defense, no one really cares if you're a rookie. They just want to know if physically you can do the job. They also want to know if you know the job, too.

A middle linebacker — even a rookie MLB — is the quarterback of the defense. He needs to know what everyone does, where everyone should go. He needs to move players around decisively. The trick is doing it without coming off the wrong way, like some arrogant peacock who has all the answers even if he's never even heard half of the questions.

"Believe me, I'm very aware of that," Laurinaitis said as he stood on the edge of the practice field last week. "You have to find a happy medium. You're young, but you have to be bold in your calls. You have to show confidence that you know what you're talking about. But you're also a rookie and you don't want to be yapping too much. You don't want to be that rookie who acts like he knows it all. I am trying hard to make sure that I don't come off like that. I just want to know what I'm supposed to know."

And how do you do that?

He laughed a little bit and raised his eyebrows for effect.

"I'm trying to talk very little and learn a lot."

REWRITING PLAYBOOK

So what has Laurinaitis learned so far?

He's learned that he isn't in college anymore, where the game always seemed to move in wondrous slow motion for him. He was an All-American by his sophomore year, the Butkus Award winner for the nation's top linebacker by his junior year, and one of the most recognized stars in the college game by the time he graduated. But the minute he arrived at Rams Park, he was smart enough to pick up how much different the NFL world would be.

"The amount of football you have to learn on the fly is amazing," he said. "Each defense is so detailed. In college I knew what everyone was doing on my defense, and I had confidence in that and I prided myself in knowing what everyone's responsibility was. But in college you had one call that played all the way through from the snap to the whistle. If we're playing 'Field 9' no matter what (the offense did), that's what we're doing."

But in the NFL, nothing is so simple. The offensive formations can change two or three times before the snap of the ball, and so can the defensive signals. Different line calls, different pass coverages, and the middle linebacker needs to know all of this.

"(In the NFL) you can call a double-coverage, then all of a sudden there's all this motion going on," he said. "Now they're in another formation, and there are three checks off that formation, and if it goes to (another) formation, there are still checks off that."

Laurinaitis, who graduated with a 3.56 GPA in communications, knew he had a lot to learn. A few years ago, he anticipated how tough the NFL learning curve would be, so he began taking a full load of summer classes so that he could graduate a semester early. "That way I didn't have to worry about missing any mini-camps," he said. "If I had missed mini-camp, man, my head would be spinning right now."

Once he arrived at Rams Park shortly after the draft, Laurinaitis did something quite unusual. It wasn't enough that he devoured the playbook. He decided to rewrite it. Literally. "Whenever the coach was talking about what we were supposed to do on a particular play, I would get a pen and paper and redraw it," he said. "This was the best way for me to study. I basically redrew the entire playbook. I did it over and over so that I wouldn't have to think about the play anymore. Besides, I wasn't sure they would let me walk out the building with the playbook anyway, so I wrote out every single play we had, and then I spent the entire summer redrawing every play all summer long."

On the first day of training camp, when it was just the rookies and selected first-year players on the field, Laurinaitis took immediate command. A few days later, he was already getting reps with the first-unit defense, and now he was out there with a huddle full of knowledgeable veterans.

Starting middle linebacker Chris Draft laughed when he was asked if Laurinaitis was taking command of the veterans, shifting them into the proper positions before the snap.

"Oh, boy, let's hope not," Draft snickered. "If he's doing that too much with the vets, we might have problems. But you can see that he has taken his job seriously. You can see that he has done a lot of studying of that playbook."

"Even if you're running with the (starting unit), you still have to communicate," Laurinaitis said. "As a 'mike' (middle LB), if you're not confident and you don't know exactly what you're doing, the other linebackers aren't going to know what they're doing. That's the one thing that I picked up on with (watching) Draft. He knows what he's doing. His calls are crisp calls. He showed me that you have to be prepared. You have to know your stuff. The calls can't be late, you can't sound like you're questioning yourself. ... If you're hesitant, if you're uncertain — even for a split second — your teammates are going to pick up on that quick."

A huge part of that learning process has been listening carefully and observing Draft. On the day he was drafted, Laurinaitis said he remembers doing a call-in interview on WXOS (101.1 FM) radio and Draft was already a guest on the show. "Well, after the show Chris stayed on the line and we talked for a few more minutes," Laurinaitis recalled. "He told me, 'James it's going to be all up to you how good you're going to be in this league.' His words really stuck with me, too. But then I kind of got this image in my mind of how much different it was going to be from college. It was going to be a business and I was kind of worried."

Laurinaitis worried how this relationship would work with a man he was essentially hired to replace. "I was worried that it would be awkward," Laurinaitis admitted. "But I knew I had to come in here and prove to (Draft) that I wouldn't have an arrogance about myself or an attitude. I would be humble. I know he has way more experience and a lot more football knowledge, too. I just wanted to pick up as much as I could."

As it turns out, Laurinaitis isn't really replacing the multi-dimensional Draft. When the rookie does eventually work his way into the starting job, Draft will likely just shift over to the starting strongside linebacker's slot. But whatever relationship Laurinaitis was trying to nurture with Draft, it seems to have worked. The veteran and the rookie can be seen constantly talking on the sidelines. Following two-a-days on Wednesday afternoon, Draft had Laurinaitis and second-year man David Vobora working on the far end of the practice field. All three men were slamming into blocking sleds for an extra 15 minutes, just working on various techniques designed to shed blockers.

"He's battling for the (starting) spot as well, and I'm trying to learn as much from him as I can while we're battling for the same spot, and that shows how classy a guy he is, and what a professional he is," Laurinaitis said. "He's shown me what a professional football player is all about. To be able to still teach the young guys while they're trying to learn to get the same job, that's pretty special."