On Sunday, most Bay Area football fans were fixated on the San Francisco 49ers loss in the NFC Championship Game, but there was a play in the AFC Championship Game that also may have hit close to home. In the fourth quarter of the game between the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens, a potentially game-winning touchdown pass from Joe Flacco to Lee Evans was batted down by a Pats cornerback. That cornerback's name was Sterling Moore, who is now heading to the Super Bowl in two weeks. The same Sterling Moore that was cut by the Oakland Raiders in July.

As Victor Cotto of the Silver and Black Report wrote on Sunday, the 21-year-old Moore took a complicated route to the NFL but came up huge on a winning team and is now headed to the biggest game possible.

The Raiders, meanwhile, must deal with the fact that they opted to cut a talented young defender, only to find themselves plagued by injuries on both offense and defense during the 2011 season. There have been many bitter pills for the Raiders to swallow over the past year. This is just one more to add to the list.

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