A replay review showed that the ball didn’t touch Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman on a Chiefs punt that was originally ruled a muff in the fourth quarter, but it did touch his hands on a Tom Brady pass a couple of plays later.
It went off Edelman and into the hands of Chiefs safety Daniel Sorensen for an interception that set the Chiefs up for a touchdown that gave them a 21-17 lead with 7:45 left in the game.
“It is part of the game,” Edelman said in the postgame press conference. “I always preach you have to have a short memory, whether it is good or bad. That was a bad play. I felt awful, but you have to move on. You have to look forward to the next time your number is called.”
The short memory extended to Tom Brady as well. He looked Edelman’s way on the next possession on an incompletion wiped out by a questionable roughing the passer penalty and then hit him once more on the final New England touchdown drive of regulation.
Edelman then came up huge in overtime. On consecutive third-and-10 plays, Tony Romo told CBS viewers that Brady would look for Edelman over the middle and Brady did exactly that for drive-sustaining completions that set up the game-winning touchdown.
That means another trip to the Super Bowl and a chance for Edelman to take part in the big game again after missing last year’s loss to the Eagles due to a torn ACL.