FOXBORO, Mass. — Right guard Stephen Neal said his injured right shoulder got to the point where he didn’t feel like he could help the team anymore this season, and that led to his trip to the injured reserve.
Neal, who was placed on IR on Dec. 2, had surgery to correct the issue a couple of weeks ago, and he said Friday, "It's fixed now, hopefully."
The biggest concern going forward will be Neal's desire to play in 2011. Due to his string of injury issues, Neal seriously contemplated retirement last offseason, but he instead signed a two-year contract. Neal didn’t sound like he was leaning one way or the other when asked about retirement Friday morning.
"Definitely [think about] that later," Neal said. "You want to go through rehab and expect to come and keep doing stuff because if you go through rehab without hopes of returning, you're not going to do a good job rehabbing. Just evaluate things later."
Neal, who turned 34 in November, has only played in all 16 regular-season games twice in his career (2004 and 2005), and by the end of the regular season, he will have missed 28 games since 2006.
"It's frustrating, but it's part of the sport," Neal said. "You signed up for the good things, but the bad things happen, too. You can't get too upset about it."
Neal has remained in New England throughout the rehabilitation process to get the most out of himself and the Patriots' medical staff.
He said his right shoulder has had "so many issues" during his career, and it was bothering him throughout the season. It never returned to form the way he hoped, and he realized that surgery would be the only way to get it better.
For now, that's all he sounds focused on, and he'll decide on his future when he is done with that process.
"I don’t want to be a distraction, but I want to come here and have a good rehab," Neal said. "I think being around people who want to get better in the training room is going to help me work a little harder than if you're in a rehab facility somewhere else with 60-year-old people that don’t care if their knee gets better or not."
