Khalil Mack's head is spinning

Being an NFL player is hard. Being an NFL player who was chosen in the top five of the draft who carries instant expectations is extremely hard. Such is the case with Raiders rookie linebacker, Khalil Mack.

The Raiders are rubbing their hands together and stroking their collective chins about the possibilities of Mack. He was considered a great all-around linebacker both as a pass rusher and in coverage and he will be expected to immediately upgrade their linebacking corps.

It has been just over a month since he first set foot in practice for rookie minicamps. That is not a lot of time to digest a playbook or catch up to the speed of the NFL. The Raiders aren't taking baby steps with him either. They're throwing everything on his plate and telling him to eat up.

"We've got his head spinning right now, which is a good thing," said Dennis Allen. "We're going to throw as much at him as we can throughout the rest of this offseason and really into the early part of training camp and at some point we'll settle down into the things that we can execute as a team and execute at a high level."

While most of the defensive veterans are feeling great about the communication that is happening on the field, Mack says he's not quite experiencing things the same way.

"It's a lot of voices behind my head right now, trying to figure out what safeties are saying, and you have different calls," said Mack. "It's a lot of communication, like they said, but you have to listen to the right things while you're out there and that's what I'm trying to do right now. I'm trying to break down and assess the game at a fast and a high level like those guys are at right now."

Mack will now have a month to digest everything he has been given. He said he plans to get together with some of the veteran players on the team in a couple weeks to help him go through things. We'll check back with him at training camp to see if things have slowed down for him.

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