As a young player in the NFL, one just drafted, one undrafted or maybe one who didn’t get a lot of playing time the season before, nothing is more important than making the team.

Making the team requires proving to the coaching staff that you have learned the lessons taught through hours of classroom work and dozens of practices, and can consistently perform the responsibilities given to you.

Therein lies the key, especially at One Patriot Place.

New England’s on-field mantra is “Do your job.” Every player has his, and if each man is doing his job, the team works as a whole.

But sometimes, especially when you’re young and trying to catch the eye of your position coach and head coach Bill Belichick, the desire to freelance and make a play overrules the rule of sticking to your role.

With the final preseason game coming Thursday and the deadline to chop rosters down to 53 on Saturday, time is running short to show that you should be on the team. And thus, the chances increase that some players will go off-script.

James Sanders has been there. Now a leader in the secondary, the safety knows from experience that trying to do too much can sometimes lead to mistakes that aren’t easy to recover from.

“I think [wanting to do too much is] an any-game thing being a young guy, not necessarily just the preseason,” Sanders said. “You can find yourself having a bad play and try so hard to make up for it that you dig yourself a deeper and deeper hole. It’s happened to a lot of us.

“You can make the game become a lot worse by trying to do too much, but the main thing is when you have bad plays, just relax and play your game and bounce back.”

He remembers a 2006 game against the Broncos, when he gave up a touchdown early and “tried so hard to make up for it, I made an even worse play later on.”

Sanders mentioned that he had a chat with rookie Pat Chung about trying to make up for one error by potentially making another after the Patriots’ preseason game with Cincinnati. That advice served Chung in good stead against the Redskins; an early punt return went off the second-round pick’s helmet, but late in the game his 33-yard return set up the winning field goal.

Chung said afterwards that he put his earlier mistake out of his mind, paving the way for his end-of-game success.

Matthew Slater found himself in a similar situation in Washington. The second-year player was flagged for a 15-yard fair-catch interference penalty in the first half, and special teams coach Scott O’Brien and special teams captain Sam Aiken both told Slater he owed them one later on. In the second half, Slater downed a punt on the two-yard line, pinning the Redskins deep in their own territory.

But the potential was there: had he not played the punt’s bounce just right, maybe it goes off his leg and through the end zone and Washington starts at the 20-yard line instead of the two.

Pierre Woods, who a few years ago was an undrafted player trying to earn a spot in an experienced linebacker group, has some firm advice: Don’t do it. Woods insisted he didn’t try to do too much to gain the coaches’ favor.

“I don’t know if there’s too much you can do. You can’t go above and beyond what you’re supposed to do,” Woods said. “You have to do whatever is in the defensive scheme so if there’s a play called, what are you going to do? You have to play the play that’s called, you can’t go off and do what you want to do, freelancing. That makes you look worse.

“You have to play within the defensive scheme and do your job. That’s it. You do your job, everything else will take care of itself. If they want you here, they want you here, and if they don’t, they don’t.”

Woods, who cherishes chances to smack players whenever he can, whether on defense or special teams, knew when he was green that he wouldn’t be perfect, even if that is what he was striving for.

Words to live by.

“Everybody’s going to have mistakes, you’re going to mess up,” he said. “It’s football. It’s like in life: people mess up, they make mistakes. So you can’t expect to be perfect, even though that’s what we preach. You’re going to make mistakes here and there. All you can do is hope and pray really, and hope that you did what you’re supposed to do.”

smanza@projo.com