The city of Baltimore seemed like the last logical place for Lee Evans to hide. Maybe that's the greatest takeaway from the past year, that Evans never felt the need to go anywhere. He still lives in his home in Baltimore, and he keeps a photo of the dreaded play on a wall. His son, Lee Evans IV, is the one who put it there. The kid has no idea what the photo means. He's 4, and he saw it on a desk one day, saw the photo of Daddy playing football, so he pinned it to his wall. Someday, Evans will tell his son the story of how he got there, to the worst moment of his football career, to the best team he's ever played on.

"It's weird that I'm still living here in Baltimore," Evans says. "It's not like I'm from here or anything like that. It's just kind of how this all worked out."

Patriots free safety Sterling Moore stripped Ravens receiver Lee Evans in the end zone. AP Photo/Winslow Townson

Here's the thing you need to know about Lee Evans: He's fine. One year after a potential winning touchdown catch was slapped out of his hands in the waning seconds of the AFC Championship Game, Evans sat in front of a television in his house last weekend, hoping for the second chance he never got. A few minutes earlier, Baltimore's Jacoby Jones had dropped a third-and-5 pass in a playoff game at Denver. The Ravens trailed by seven and were running out of time in the frigid mountain air. Joe Flacco heaved up a 70-yard prayer, and Jones wrapped his arms around it and found the end zone.

And Evans nearly jumped out of his seat.

Sometimes, in the postseason, you get only one shot. Evans didn't know then, after the ball fell to the ground in New England, that it could be the last pass ever thrown to him. He hustled back to the huddle after that play, with 22 seconds to go, waiting to redeem himself. Move on to the next play, he thought. That's what you're taught in football. Eleven seconds later, Billy Cundiff's potential tying 32-yard field goal attempt sailed wide, the Ravens were sent home and Evans could barely move. He couldn't believe it was over.

He was cut in March and sat out the 2012 season; Cundiff was released at the end of training camp, bounced around to Washington, then to San Francisco, and is battling to make the 49ers' active roster. He desperately wants to kick in the postseason again.

Sunday night, the Ravens will get a second chance. They'll go back to New England in an AFC Championship Game rematch for a trip to the Super Bowl.

Evans, for his part, is as over it as he can be. His former teammates made an impossible night somewhat easier when they refused to point fingers. They won as a team and they lost as a team, they told him. Some people say those things to the cameras but don't really mean them, Evans says. He knows every man in that locker room believed that.

Today, he can walk by that photo without feeling sad or embarrassed. He doesn't know how he'll feel Sunday, when his old team stands on the FieldTurf where Cundiff's kick flailed wide left and Evans' dreams were swatted away.

"I do think about it," Evans says. "I don't think about it in a negative way, though. Right after the play, I went to the [PR] guy and basically asked him to get me a picture of it. Give me a picture of that moment, so I have it. I wanted it as a constant reminder to keep pushing, to keep going.

"I look at that picture, and basically I ask myself, 'Do I want another opportunity to do that again?'"

The Baltimore Ravens' locker room is sort of an anomaly in a league full of constantly changing faces. Boys don't just grow into men here; they become graying fixtures who spend their entire careers wearing the black and purple.