As the pro scouts will tell you, there just aren't a lot of Jamaican Oklahoma State Cowboys by way of Euliss, Texas, in any one draft class, but you'll see one tonight when the Steelers and the New Orleans Saints begin the always fraught with peril NFL exhibition season in Canton, Ohio.

That's Ryan McBean, who'll wear number 95 among the generally anonymous Pittsburgh defenders filling the TV screen in this first dress rehearsal, the better to keep the stars ambulatory for at least another week.

"He's going to get a ton of snaps," defensive line coach John Mitchell said. "I told him and 67 [rookie free agent Derrick Jones], 'If it's hot, don't even look a me. You're not coming out.' "

There are a couple of interesting facts about McBean, as if being a Jamaican Oklahoma State Cowboy by way of Euliss, Texas, isn't enough. One is that among the bodies wrestling in the trenches of Saint Vincent in the first two weeks of training camp, his is one of the quickest. The other is that McBean is a fourth-round draft choice, which would be neither here nor there except for this little factoid regarding the contemporary Steelers biosphere:

Among the various species that make up the top level of Dick LeBeau's defensive ecosystem, the most common predator -- in fact a rather stunning 36 percent of his starters -- are fourth-round draft picks.

Aaron Smith, Deshea Townsend, Ike Taylor and Larry Foote, meaning that there's a least one fourth-rounder in every layer of the defense. Hoping to one day be perhaps a fifth, McBean has impressed with his quickness, if not with his mechanics just yet.

"He needs a lot more time," Mitchell said of the 6-foot-5, 290-pounder who kept turning up in opposing backfields all over the Big 12. "He is awfully quick, and as soon as he learns the game I think he's going to be a good football player, but that's not going to be next week or next month or even next year."

Of course, tonight's game starts in, what, 12 hours?

McBean is essentially learning the game all over again because so many collegiate defenses, including Oklahoma State's, are relatively simplistic explode-off-the-ball-and-run-to-the-gaps schemes. The transition to the Steelers' defense, a complex positional and situational system, can be very difficult. For McBean, the difficulty starts with something as basic as his stance.

"I've been spending extra time with [defensive ends] Brett Keisel and Aaron Smith trying to get it right and understand it," McBean said this week. "There's a big difference from the way I'm used to doing it. At Oklahoma State, I'd have my hand down and I was leaning way forward on the balls of me feet. Here, you're a little more flat-footed so that you can move laterally better.

"At Oklahoma State, if I was in my stance and you swept my hand away, I'd have fallen on my face. That's not the way they do things here."

McBean hardly fell on his face, neither literally nor figuratively, as he and his teammates averaged eight tackles behind the line of scrimmage every Saturday, eighth best in the NCAA last year. His 4.5 sacks didn't jump off the stat sheet, but the totality of his game was must-see film. He forced fumbles, recovered fumbles, batted away passes, blocked kicks and accounted for more than 80 yards in losses by himself.

Typically, all of that impresses Mitchell ever so slightly, if at all.

"He just hasn't played a lot," Mitchell said. "He's not bruised and tattered."

Toward that end, the offensive linemen in camp are certainly doing their part. As McBean's repetitions seem to swing between unstoppable and confused, some very large people have been seen to take advantage. Chris Kemoeatu engaged McBean in a 650-pound entanglement of limbs and rage the other day, but McBean held his own, chopping Kemoeatu's arms away to free himself on a bull rush. In another instance, McBean flashed past a desperate Trai Essex, but slipped in the grass as he closed on the theoretical quarterback.

"Get up!" Mitchell screamed.

A self-proclaimed non-screamer, Mitchell goes out of character on McBean, which is how you know he believes McBean can be special.

"Not a screamer?" McBean said. "He's a heck of a screamer. Maybe way too much of a screamer."

Might not stop for a while, but it's just part of the educational process, the first lab coming tonight.