The Minnesota Vikings scored a huge touchdown as time expired to beat the New Orleans Saints in a Divisional Round playoff game on Sunday, but what happened next was also interesting. The Vikings had to snap the ball for the extra-point attempt, which took several minutes to accomplish as the field was swarmed with players and reporters.

Eventually, they got the field cleared out and the Vikings snapped the ball, choosing to take a knee rather than kick the extra-point while up five points. This mattered to nobody at all — except gamblers.

The line for Sunday’s game closed with the Vikings favored by 5.5 points, which means if you took them to cover, an extra-point would have put them over the top.

And making things worse is that there were no downsides to kicking the extra-point instead of kneeling, as the Saints were not within range to potentially block it, return it and get more points. The Vikings simply went out there and took a knee as a formality so the game could end proper.

While we don’t have exact numbers or even ballpark figures at this point, it’s safe to say that the decision to kneel cost a lot of people a lot of money (and, of course, paid off for others). This is why you bet the moneyline, folks!

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