Realizing he will be the focus of NFL highlights this week after his first-quarter, hot-dog fumble off an interception return in yesterday's 38-27 win over the Cincinnati Bengals, Ravens safety Ed Reed has chosen to embrace his fate.

"Let it play," Reed said. "It's funny. I'm glad I got that highlight if they are going to keep playing it and put me on TV like that. But I have a whole lot of football left."

Reed picked off Bengals quarterback Jon Kitna at the Ravens' 46 with seven minutes left in the first quarter, made a nifty return in which he broke loose of a few tacklers and made it down to Cincinnati's 8.

Assuming he was home free a couple of yards before, Reed held the ball out like a torch in his right hand and started to high-step into the end zone, but receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh came from behind and stripped him of the ball.

"I was like a kid in the candy store with no money," Reed said. "You can see the candy, but you just can't get it.

"The ball went up. I looked back, but not all the way. The guy just came up behind me. But I have to be smarter."

Reed, the Ravens' 2002 first-round pick out of the University of Miami, received some advice from teammates on the importance of capitalizing in that situation. On the sideline, Ray Lewis was especially emphatic.

"He said just tuck the ball away," Reed said.

"I'm just going to keep playing football and not make the same mistake twice. I was thinking about it right after the play until the next ball was snapped. I let it go."

Reed has experience with letting plays like that go. He said something similar happened in college.

"Boston College, my sophomore year, I caught an interception and fumbled the ball," said Reed, who also stripped a teammate of an interception and returned it for a touchdown against Boston College last year. "I'm already getting it from my teammates. But like I said, I made up for it, and I've just got to keep playing football."

Several Ravens had a chance to recover the fumble, including safety Chad Williams, who trailed the play from the beginning. The Bengals' Peter Warrick, though, was able to gain control.

"I was pretty close," Williams said. "Something kept on telling me to just follow him on to the end zone. ... It was just out of my reach."

Reed made up for his mistake by intercepting Kitna in the fourth quarter with the Ravens up 31-20, a play that essentially sealed the victory. Defensive lineman Adalius Thomas made up for the mistake for the overall defense by intercepting Kitna on the first play of the second quarter and scoring a touchdown, giving the Ravens a 14-7 lead.

"I didn't know what happened until I got to the sideline," Thomas said of the Reed fumble. " ... We knew we had to do something to overcome that."

In the locker room, Reed seemingly had triumphed over it. The only exception he took when answering questions was when a comparison was drawn between it and former Dallas Cowboys lineman Leon Lett's fumble caused by Buffalo Bills receiver Don Beebe in the 1993 Super Bowl.

"That's not the same thing," he said. "You can't compare me to Leon Lett. That's different."