Ray Rice as one player who genuinely enjoys camp

Count running back Ray Rice as one player who genuinely enjoys camp.

"Camp is a time where you build on your team," he said Monday. "There's no one else around but our fans, our people, and we get to be around these guys. I'm roommates with [fullback] Le'Ron McClain. He comes in the room bothering me at night. … Last night, I tried to go to bed. He came in plucking with me. That's time you never forget. These are times that you embrace, you never forget. Just having dinner with a rookie, meetings. We see funny things on film, we get to laugh. Even at camp, some people cry, but it's just a moment that you have to embrace."

If there is one regret Rice has, it's that he missed his mother's birthday on Monday.

"There's only one sorrow I feel today: it's my mother's birthday, and I couldn't be with her," Rice said of his mother Janet. "But I bet she's more proud that I'm here having fun at camp, and she's enjoying her birthday."

I've been working on a feature story on consensus top-five fantasy pick Ray Rice over the past couple of days for my fantasy football preview in tomorrow's b (you can find it online here, of course).

I chatted with Rice about a lot of things, most of which pertained to fantasy football and his individual statistics. But when I asked him about the one thing he tried to improve on the most during the offseason, the 5-foot-8 running back said he wanted to become a better pass blocker to make sure Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco is still around to chuck him those dump-off passes.

"One thing I always think I need improvement on is pass blocking," Ray Rice said. "When guys see me in a game, their first initial move is to try to bull-rush me over, which, if I'm staying stout, and I can cut a few times to slow them up.