The Herald- Terrence Wheatley’s season ended just when it was starting to look good. The rookie second-round pick out of Colorado was placed on injured reserve yesterday with an injured left wrist. Wheatley hurt it Nov. 2 against the Colts in Indianapolis and hadn’t played since. The Indy game had been his most productive of the season, with an early breakup on Marvin Harrison to force a punt and another breakup downfield on the play that led to his injury when he landed awkwardly... it wasn’t clear if he had suffered a break, though a source close to the player said the pain was the most intense he had felt in his career. That was saying something, since Wheatley needed to have a metal rod inserted into his right wrist following a bad break in college.

So the Patriots have to IR their 2nd round draft pick right at the moment he was starting to emerge as a playmaker in their already depleted secondary? Sure. No problem. Why should this week be any different? It doesn't matter that this is the kind of break that would make a lesser team bury their heads in their hands and whine about the hand dealt to them by Cruel Fate. But to the 2008 New England Patriots, 'Tis but a scratch. Two weeks ago they lost their best defensive player? Only a flesh wound. Lost their top three Running Backs? Have at you. Their Hall of Fame defensive captain and emotional leader? We'll call it a draw. Oh, yeah, and the most indispensible player of our times had a season that was too short to hard boil and egg? They've had worse.

You can scoff and say that Wheatley had hardly been a factor this year and you'd be correct. But it was precisely this time last year that Brandon Merriweather began to step up and play a significant amount of snaps, which increased right through to the Super Bowl. And Wheatley was emerging at the right time to do the same. But the Pats are so banged up in the secondary right now that they went with a nickel package on only 22 of 77 downs last week and haven't employed a dime package in the last two weeks. There's not another team in the NFL that could withstand this kind of attrition and still be in the thick of the playoff hunt. All things considered, the 2008 season could end up being their proudest moment because where most teams would've packed it in by now and started playing for next season or for contracts, the Pats have hung in there, still fighting for a championship. So let the rest of the NFL come back here and take what's coming to them. The yellow bastards.