Post-game stat change costs daily fantasy contestant $1 million prize

Rampage

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Mar 19, 2019
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USA TODAY Sports

Rob Huntze won $1 million in a DraftKings daily fantasy contest. Until he didn’t.

As explained by David Purdum of ESPN.com, a change to the official statistics from Monday night’s Bears-Rams game robbed Huntze of the jackpot he believed he’d won.

After the game ended, DraftKings’ official tabulation showed that Huntze had scored the most points out in more than 175,000 entries — and that he’d won $1 million. Then, 30 minutes later, it all went away.

The result changed because the NFL changed a sack that occurred late in the fourth quarter to a running play. As explained by Purdum, Rams quarterback Jared Goff faked a handoff to the right and ran a bootleg to the left. The Bears tackled Goff three yards behind the line of scrimmage.

Listed as a sack at the time, the official scorer changed the designation upon noticing that receivers appeared to be blocking.

“Plays such as this one are routinely discussed by the Stats Crew and updated accordingly,” NFL spokesman Michael Signora told Purdum via email. “In this instance, because the play happened so close to the end of the game, it was reviewed by the Stats Crew and then updated prior to publishing the Game Summary, commonly referred to as the Game Book.”

Huntze instead won $3,554.

The morale of the story? Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched — and until it’s verified that they are indeed chickens and not ducks.
 
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