National Football League

Pats players face tense time with roster cut ahead

Published Aug. 31, 2010 12:29 a.m. ET

foxsports

When Mike Wright was coming out of high school, no Division I team wanted him. When he was leaving college, no NFL team drafted him.

When the New England Patriots cut their roster on Tuesday, there's no chance he'll be released.

The defensive lineman is entering his sixth season with the Patriots but still knows what teammates are going through as Tuesday's deadline for reducing the roster from 80 to 75 players approaches.

''They don't know what's going on, to be honest with you. Their heads are spinning'' he said Monday. ''It's a tough time for them.''

Wright played one season at Ashland, a Division II school, then transferred to Cincinnati where he walked on to the team and ended up leading its defensive tackles with 42 tackles as a senior. The Patriots took a chance on him and he appeared in 13 games as a rookie in 2005.

And he kept getting better.

Last year, Wright started nine games after defensive end Richard Seymour, a five-time Pro Bowler, was traded to the Oakland Raiders before the season. Jarvis Green, who started 12 games at end, signed with the Denver Broncos after the season. And Ty Warren, a starter at end the past six years, is out for the season with a hip injury.

So the Patriots may need Wright more now than ever. But he won't let that convince him that coach Bill Belichick will keep him even though his job is secure.

''I always look at myself as on the bubble, whether I am or am not. I play every down like it's my last and try to make the team every day,'' Wright said. ''There's more stressful years ... but this year I don't know who he's keeping on the team and you could say I'm on the team, but only Bill knows that.''

And what Bill knows might not be what Matthew Slater, whose status is far more precarious than Wright's, wants to learn.

The wide receiver-kick returner is going into his third year after being drafted in 2008 in the fifth round out of UCLA. In his two years, he has no catches and 22 kickoff returns.

He said Tuesday that it's an unsettling time for him.

''It's going to be disappointing if things don't work out the way you want them to, but sometimes things are out of your control,'' Slater said. ''Like I always say, you can only control your actions and your attitude, and everything else is out of your control and you have to learn to accept that.

''So (if) you come out with the proper attitude and you come out and bust your butt every day, you can leave with you head up either way it goes.''

Few players improved their chances of making the team in the Patriots last exhibition game.

They were thoroughly outplayed in a 36-35 loss to St. Louis in which the defense rarely stopped the Rams on third down and the offense rarely converted on third down.

That resulted in the Patriots holding the ball for only 16 minutes, 14 seconds and Belichick lashing into them at a team meeting.

''It's behind us now. That's why we're out here this hot day, out here in full pads,'' linebacker Jerod Mayo said. ''We did get some humble pie and we didn't play like we were supposed to. We just played dumb football, had too many penalties, couldn't get off the field on third down.''

Their last chance to show improvement comes Thursday night in their final exhibition game, at the New York Giants

''Guys learn from the negatives and positives of every game,'' Wright said. ''You take that and try to fix it on the practice field and then go back the next week and get better, so we're trying to do that this week.''

Wright started against the Rams, but first stringers are expected to get little playing time, if any, in the last exhibition game.

Belichick already knows what he provides.

''He's a very versatile player, athletic enough to do some of the more skilled things, powerful enough to stand up against big guys or more than one guy, double teams, things like that,'' Belichick said. ''From where he's started, he's really had a good career to this point and he continues to work hard and build on it.''

In his first Patriots camp, Wright simply was trying to make the practice squad of a team that had won the Super Bowl the previous season.

Week after week, there was a decent chance he'd get word that he had been cut. That word never came.

''Nobody even told me I made the team. I just didn't get released,'' he said. ''I always thought I'd get a phone call or an official, `you're on the team.' There was nothing (but) my stuff was still in the locker.''

It still is.