FOXBORO — From a football perspective, it was a nightmare scenario: the hardworking rookie, finally starting to put it all together, earns his first start of the season against his team's biggest rival in a prime-time game, but his year ends when he suffers a first-half injury.

If that sounds a bit familiar, it should. That's exactly the bad dream Patriots cornerback Terrence Wheatley found himself in last November.

The second-round draft pick was with the first 11 on defense and lined up opposite Marvin Harrison when New England faced the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday Night Football. On his second pass breakup of the night, his breakout game ended with a broken left wrist.

Wheatley underwent surgery to reset the broken bones as well as repair ligaments.

Now railroad tracks-like scars line his skin, but otherwise the Texas native is feeling fine and ready to pick up where he left off last year. This week he was back on the field for organized team activities, knocking off the rust.

"These couple days are me …going out there and working on a lot of little things, and I think I've done that so far," Wheatley said after Wednesday's session. "I'm just going to take it pretty much day by day and fine-tune my game and get back into seeing things. That's one thing about this position — it's more [instinctive] than anything, and so when you don't play you don't get to see a whole lot; so the more I get to play, the more I get to see stuff."

As he spent the final weeks of the season on the sidelines, Wheatley was able to learn, but as he noted, being a cornerback requires a certain amount of instinct, and he couldn't get that by merely watching video.

"You can only learn so much watching film. I can call out routes all day, but it's different when it's coming at you full speed and you have to react to it (and) you probably can't call it out, anyway," Wheatley said.

Though he still felt he wasn't playing up to his standards, Wheatley was frustrated to see his season end just as he was putting it all together.

"It was very frustrating because you have these high expectations when you come in — not necessarily what people think of you, what you think of yourself," he said. "In this sport you have to be…almost arrogant when you play. Especially at my position because when you mess up, everybody knows. The announcers, the people at home, everybody knows, so you have to go out there and you're literally by yourself. Once you get in the groove and start seeing things, everything starts to slow down. That just comes from seeing it enough."

Although they are beginning just their second season, Wheatley and Jonathan Wilhite find themselves as the most experienced New England corners when it comes to knowing the team's system. The Pats signed Shawn Springs and Leigh Bodden, and also drafted Darius Butler at the position.

Wheatley welcomes the competition, and sees some humor in such young players being teachers to veterans Springs and Bodden.

But it is a reciprocal relationship.

"We just have to help them out with the terminology. I mean, realistically they've seen it all before; they probably just called it something different, so we just have to help them out with a lot of the names," Wheatley said. "They've seen a lot of the players we'll be playing against, so you just go out there and learn a lot of little things. We'll help them out with the terminology and they'll help me out with what I can expect based on a certain offensive formation. So I definitely like having them around."

While Wheatley called Springs and Bodden cool, laid-back guys, Springs is definitely the jokester, who will spend 15 minutes cracking wise in the weight room before getting to the business of working out.

During his rookie year, Wheatley learned from now-Eagle Ellis Hobbs. He took particular notice of Hobbs' understanding of how teams would attack him, and also his anger at himself when he gave up even a four-yard completion.

Wheatley will carry Hobbs' lessons with him, as well as the things he's discovered in his NFL life thus far.

"You have to be almost arrogant; you have to be the cockiest person in the world. And that's a Catch-22 because you have to be humble at the same time and realize you can always improve, but in between the lines, you can deal with that later," he said. "You can be humble in the locker room when you're watching yourself (on film), but out here [on the field] it's a lonely, lonely world when you get beat.

"You'll figure out how much confidence you have the first time you give something up — even something short."

smanza@projo.com