Patrick Mahomes, we're not questioning your football intelligence.
We just want you to know how big of an impact you had on bettors when you chose to slide to end the Chiefs' 23-20 win over the Jets on Sunday Night Football.
The Chiefs had closed as 7.5-point favorites versus the Jets, with that number as high as Chiefs -9.5 earlier in the week.
That means that a Mahomes rushing TD in the closing minutes would have given the Chiefs at least a 9-point lead and likely a 10-point lead on the extra point.
A VERY SIGNIFICANT PLAY
Patrick Mahomes slides after the first down and the Jets (+7.5) get the cover ✅pic.twitter.com/icCUNCmmGA
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) October 2, 2023
Now, there's no guarantee that the Jets wouldn't have found a way to score on their subsequent final possession and ruined the cover for Chiefs bettors anyway.
But that also might have been asking a lot of Zach Wilson and the New York offense, even given how solid Wilson looked at times on Sunday.
Either way, we guess Taylor Swift gets to leave the game happy, since Travis Kelce's team walked away with the win.
Too bad Chiefs bettors can't say the same — and there were a whole lot of them.
At Caesars, about 96% of all bettors were on the Chiefs' spread, which waffled between -7.5 and -9 at the sportsbook. At BetMGM, roughly 90% of the money was on the Chiefs to cover at more than a touchdown. And according to one estimate, perhaps as much as $80 million was bet on the Chiefs-Jets spread, meaning that Mahomes' slide cost Chiefs spread bettors millions and millions on Sunday.
