With an act of brazen insubordination, followed by a show of intense solidarity, football season came to an end for California's Woodside High School.

It wasn't supposed to end. Not for another few weeks. But after the team's fifth straight loss, Head Coach Packy Moss reportedly returned to the dressing room and heard his players pounding on their lockers in rhythm with the chant, "(Bleep) Packy." When none of them would give her the names of those leading the mutiny, the school's principal canceled the rest of the 2003 campaign.

Moss resigned before 2004, leaving Woodside with some motivated athletes in his wake. They wanted to prove they were better, both as players and as people, than the perception of them after three straight losing seasons and the ugly chanting incident - so they used it as fuel. They focused on their job. They fought for their reputation. And they followed the lead of their quarterback.

His name was Julian Edelman.

"He was a leader," said Steve Nicolopulos, who took over for Moss as Woodside's coach. "He was one of the main characters. Kids looked up to him; he set the tone by example.

"He knew how to take care of business - and he took care of business."

A year after its season was truncated by turmoil, Edelman's three-touchdown title game helped Woodside cap a 13-0 season with a state sectional championship. And more than five years later, Nicolopulos is confident the New England Patriots can count on his former player to take care of business again.

As soon as Wes Welker went down with a knee injury in the first quarter of the team's regular-season finale, Edelman instantly became a major factor in the fate of the Patriots' postseason.

He became New England's starting slot receiver, which is to say he became Tom Brady's security blanket, and his ability to replicate Welker's performance in that role could decide whether the Pats' season continues on to San Diego or ends with today's wild-card contest against the Ravens.

It's unfair to expect Edelman will be as productive in the position as the NFL's leading receiver, though the Patriots will need him to present at least a reasonable facsimile in order to counter an aggressive, attacking Baltimore defense. And if that's what they need, that's what they'll get - according to his former coach.

"Julian," Nicolopulos said, "has always been one that's been able to rise to the occasion."

Patriots fans have seen that through the course of his rookie season as a pro, when the seventh-round draft pick was converted from quarterback to receiver, then broke his arm in the middle of the year, but still managed to rank third on the team in receptions.

He met the demands in his debut, even, stepping in for the injured Welker and making eight catches for 98 yards against the Jets. He scored his first career touchdown against the unbeaten Colts despite wearing a cast up to his elbow on one arm. Then he snagged 10 balls for 103 yards last week against the Texans.

He enters today with 37 catches, and averaging 9.7 yards with each one of them, remarkable numbers for a 23-year-old rookie who as recently as a year ago had never played receiver in his life. But numbers not totally unforeseen by the Patriots.

After high school at Woodside, then a year of junior college in California, Edelman accepted the lone scholarship offer he received from a Division I program and enrolled at Kent State University. Other schools weren't keen on his size - 5-foot-11 and 198 pounds - but Doug Martin saw him differently.

"I knew he was a difference maker, and I knew we were getting a steal," said the Golden Flashes coach, who brought Edelman aboard and shaped the entire offense around him. As a quarterback he threw the ball when it was necessary, but he was primarily used in that position because it was the best way to make him a factor in every snap.

"Our whole deal when we had him here was keep the ball in his hands," said Martin, whose Kent State program has had three NFL Pro Bowlers each of the last three years. "We wanted him touching the ball every play, whether it's a run or a pass. As long as he had the ball, something good was going to happen."

Good happened often enough that Martin says Edelman was the Mid-American Conference's "best player, bar none" over each of his three seasons - including a senior year in which he ran for 1,551 yards and 13 scores, while attracting the attention of pro scouts. They saw that he was "a good runner, he had good quickness, and he was a strong runner," according to Patriots Player Personnel Director Nick Caserio, and that mix was intriguing to more than a few teams.

None more so than New England.

"The Patriots did the best job of evaluating him," Martin said. "They sent several different coaches, they sent several different scouts, they really grilled him mentally about the game of football. They put him on the chalkboard and had him explain pass protections and blocking schemes to really see how intelligent he was football-wise. They found out a lot more about him than other teams did."

So Caserio was comfortable with the admitted "leap of faith" his team took by tabbing Edelman in the second round. And that level of comfort has only continued to arrive since he arrived in Foxborough.

He has embraced the challenge of learning a complex offense loaded with reads and reactions. He has welcomed the opportunity to master a new position, and eagerly followed the examples set by Welker and Randy Moss. He has prepared himself every day for the very chance he'll be presented this afternoon.

And, according to the coaches he's still in touch with, he has done it all "with a chip on his shoulder" - just like he did when playing in their own programs.

"He wants to prove everyone wrong," Martin said. "He goes into every practice like that; he goes into every game like that. That's just who he is. All you have to do is doubt him, and that's all the motivation he needs."

"When you tell him he can't do something," added Nicolopulos, "that's when he really puts out and makes sure that he gets it done."

Once they said he was just another player among the rowdy misfits of a losing program. Then they said he was too small to be worthy of a college scholarship. And now they're saying the Patriots are going nowhere in the playoffs without Welker in the slot.

In California, and in Ohio, however, there are coaches who've never agreed with the crowd. Nor are they about to start now. They are confident the Pats have a replacement who'll be ready. Excited. Eager. And able. His name is Julian Edelman.

And, by the end of today, NFL fans everywhere may know it.

"The bigger the game, the higher the stakes - the more he loves it," Martin said. "He is the most competitive football player I have ever been around."