If anyone is aware of how close Patriots Kevin Faulk is to the end of his game it would be none other than Kevin Faulk himself. A little over a year ago, during a game against the Jets, Kevin Faulk was knocked out of bounds by the Jets’ cornerback, Drew Coleman, at the end of an 8-yard carry. Coleman managed to hit Faulk’s right knee in just the right place to damage his anterior cruciate ligament.

Within those few split seconds, Faulk’s 12th season with the Pats was done.

It was reported the only days after the incident Faulk sat in Bill Belichick’s office and told him that he had every intention of returning to the Patriots for his 13th season.

Sitting in the locker room at Gillette Stadium someone asked Faulk how his previous year had been. “Difficult. In a lot of different ways, a lot of different areas, but difficulty comes with life,’’ he said. “It’s how you respond after that. I can recall the week after I got hurt, I was really down, I wasn’t really myself, being ugly to a lot of people, and I realized that. I came back the next week and was like, ‘Wow.’ Apologized to everybody that I affiliated with that week and was like, ‘Hey, look, I’m sorry. I was down’.”

Faulk has thought many times of retirement but never made the decision final. For now he sits on the sidelines of home games and watches his best friends go out and play his game in hopes of returning to the feild some day soon.