It was a week full of backdoor covers in the NFL. One bettor didn’t mind at all.
Over the weekend, a bettor placed $50 on a 10-team parlay at BetMGM. The parlay would win $35,392.50, or about 700-to-1 odds. It was a mix of college basketball and NFL games, and the bettor won all the college basketball games. He mostly took large underdogs:
- UMass +28.5
- Arkansas Pine Bluff +33
- Florida A&M +20.5
- Houston Baptist +34.5
- North Dakota State +23.5
- Houston U. +2.5
He needed to go 4-0 on NFL to win the parlay, and that’s not easy. It’s especially not easy when you are in danger of losing each of the four and somehow pull each one out in the final minutes.
Bills -4.5: Not technically a “backdoor cover” but close enough. The Bills led 27-17 in the final minute but Justin Herbert somehow completed a 55-yard desperation pass down to the Bills’ 2. For some reason the Chargers, with no timeouts, ran on their first play after the long pass. That cost them about 17 seconds and only gained a yard. Then from the 1-yard line with just a few seconds left the Chargers threw incomplete twice and Herbert was stopped on fourth down as time expired. If any of those four plays get in the end zone, the parlay loses.
Jaguars +7: The Browns led 27-19 for most of the fourth quarter. With 5:29 left the Browns failed on a fourth-and-1 at Jacksonville’s 22. The Jaguars went on a long drive. It seemed the Browns got off the field on a fourth-and-10 incompletion, but Browns defensive end Olivier Vernon was called for a questionable penalty for initiating contact with his helmet. On third-and-2 with a little more than two minutes left, the Jaguars scored. They lost 27-25, covering the spread. Parlay still alive.
Bengals +6: The Giants took a 19-10 lead with less than four minutes left. The Bengals offense had not scored one touchdown all day. But a 72-yard drive that included two Giants penalties, including a roughing the passer, led to a 1-yard touchdown with a little more than two minutes to go. The Bengals lost 19-17, and the parlay was still going.
Buccaneers +3.5: The Buccaneers, playing in the late set of games, looked like the team that would ruin the 10-teamer. They trailed 17-0 in the first quarter and 20-7 at the half to the powerful Kansas City Chiefs. It was 27-10 going into the fourth quarter.
The Buccaneers got a 31-yard touchdown to Mike Evans on fourth-and-3. Still, Tampa Bay needed to keep Kansas City from scoring and get another touchdown itself. They forced a punt and a roughing the passer penalty kept their next drive going. With more than four minutes left Evans scored again and somehow Tampa Bay trailed by just 3 points. The Chiefs got some first downs but never threatened to score, and they ran out the clock on a 27-24 win and a half-point cover.
And with that fourth late NFL cover, any of which could have easily gone the other way, one bettor turned $50 into a $35,392.50 win.
That bettor can’t complain about any of his bad beats for a long, long time.
