Sports

Bettor turns $5 into $72K with unlikely wager in NFL divisional round

Correctly predicting the first touchdown scorer of an NFL game is really hard. Doing it for every game played in a single weekend is almost impossible.

Parlaying those incredibly long odds will get you even longer odds that can turn a few bucks into a huge payday. For a bettor named Cameron Craig on Twitter, that meant turning a $5 free bet into $72,795.

After nailing the first players to score in each of the first three games of the divisional playoffs – Travis Kelce, Dallas Goedert and Ja’Marr Chase – Craig just needed Dalton Schultz to score first in Sunday night’s game between the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers. The clip below shows the incredible moment it actually happened.

To illustrate how improbable this was, San Francisco had the first crack at scoring, which would’ve killed this bet on its last leg. Dak Prescott threw a first-quarter interception from his own 21, but Dallas’ defense held strong with a short field and forced the Niners to kick a field goal.

Schultz scored on the next Cowboys possession, reaching the end zone before other threats such as CeeDee Lamb, Ezekiel Elliott, Tony Pollard, or even Prescott himself, could ruin the parlay.

The first touchdown scorers weren’t the only right calls Craig made. He also declined taking an early payout of $1,393 before the Schultz touchdown.

Craig might have considered the payout if it was a little more, but $1,400 wasn’t enough to sway the temptation of winning more than $72,000. The early payout likely would have been more if the initial stake wasn’t a free bet, but it still seemed a little skimp.

DraftKings will probably wish it had offered a little more.

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This post appeared first on USA TODAY