Anquan Boldin remembers the abrupt, merciless end to the Baltimore Ravens' 2011 season, and the helpless despair he felt on that cold evening in Foxborough, Mass., a year ago.

Most vividly of all, he recalls the inconsolable tears of teammate Lee Evans, whose failure to secure an apparent game-winning touchdown pass from Joe Flacco helped send the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl – and the Ravens into an offseason of deep, searing disappointment.

"The guy I felt the worst for was Lee Evans," Boldin said recently, harkening back to that 23-20 AFC championship game defeat, which also included Billy Cundiff's missed 32-yard field-goal attempt with 11 seconds remaining. "In his career, he had never been to the playoffs. Then you get in that position and have a chance to be the hero – and to have him have that situation happen to him, it was really tough.

"I remember seeing him in the locker room with his head in his hands, sobbing, just heartbroken. I was trying to console him, but how do you console somebody like that who feels like he let down his team, and let down the whole city of Baltimore? You're trying to tell him it's gonna be OK, but for him, it wasn't OK."

Evans, signed by the Jacksonville Jaguars as a free agent last April and released four months later, is out of football now. The Ravens, despite a steady succession of obstacles since last January, are back in the ring to take another swing: On Sunday, Boldin and many of his 2011 teammates will return to Gillette Stadium for an AFC championship rematch against the heavily favored Patriots, and they'll do so with a healthy appreciation of the opportunity they squandered 12 months ago.

"I think what you're seeing is [a byproduct of] what this team became last year, [beginning in] the locker room after the loss in New England, and with the way the loss went down and the way we handled that," coach John Harbaugh said earlier this season. "It was one of those things that just brewed in us and brewed in us for the offseason, and a good thing came out of it."

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Even if the Ravens fall short again on Sunday, Harbaugh and his players deserve credit for having clawed their way back to the brink of a Super Bowl, a journey culminating in last Saturday's improbable, 38-35 double-overtime victory over the top-seeded Denver Broncos. In the process, the AFC North champions fought through an inordinate share of adversity, bonded by the conviction that they could parlay their near-miss in last year's conference-title game into an even more special season.

Baltimore's bad luck began in May, when star pass rusher Terrell Suggs tore his Achilles' tendon, an injury that doctors believed would likely cause him to miss the entire 2012 campaign. Suggs, in what Harbaugh referred to as a medical "miracle," returned in October, explaining earlier this month that "the way last year ended, I wasn't gonna sit out this year. We have a team that is very special. I knew we might have an opportunity to do something great, and I wanted to be a part of it. So, shutting it down was not an option. I had to get back with my team."

In September the Ravens improved to 2-1 with a dramatic, 31-30 victory over the Patriots the night after wideout Torrey Smith's brother, Tevin Jones, was killed in a motorcycle accident. Smith caught six passes for 127 yards and two touchdowns on a Sunday night steeped in emotion.

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