SAN JOSE, Calif. - It was a matter of inches, but they made a big difference for the Patriots on Sunday against the 49ers.

In the fourth quarter against San Francisco, Matt Cassel completed a pass to Kevin Faulk on second-and-8 from the Niners' 42-yard line. Faulk went out of bounds near the first-down marker, but when the chains were brought out to measure, it appeared that New England would be just inches short of the first down.

But Bill Belichick felt otherwise, and a television replay shown in the coaches' box upstairs confirmed that the officials may have spotted the ball a little short of where Faulk actually went out.

"When I saw the play I was standing pretty close, maybe a couple yards away from where it happened. I thought they spotted him [incorrectly]," Belichick said during a conference call yesterday. "The replay came on upstairs and the coaches thought he was further than that. We had two timeouts, there was about six minutes left in the game, and I felt like we could afford to challenge. I had quite a bit of time to think about it with the chains coming across the field, so we used the challenge there."

Had New England not won the challenge, it would have lost one of its timeouts, but Belichick felt that the Pats could afford to risk losing one.

As it turned out, the spot was changed, the chains remeasured, and New England got the first down. Five plays later, Stephen Gostkowski nailed the 49-yard field goal that put San Francisco in a two-score hole with just 4:42 left.

Belichick was asked if he later rethought the decision to challenge and take the third-and-inches scenario.

"I was thinking about it Sunday night, that maybe it would have been better to have third-and-inches than the first down," Belichick said. "But you always think you can get a couple of inches in those situations, and should be able to, but we've all seen situations where something happens, [and] what looks like third-and-inches becomes fourth-and-2. You don't want to think that way, but there's that 10 percent chance of something going wrong."

smanza@projo.com