Matt LaFleur and the Green Bay Packers kept their playoff hopes alive on Monday Night Football, doubling up the LA Rams 24-12 at Lambeau Field to improve to 6-8 on the year.
The Packers' head coach probably didn't make any new fans in the betting world during the game's final drive, after choosing to kneel three consecutive times instead of trying to score more points in the waning moments of the fourth quarter.
Green Bay drove the ball all the way to the Rams' 1-yard line with under two minutes remaining and a twelve point lead. Instead of trying to score a touchdown, LaFleur elected to have Aaron Rodgers kneel down to complete the contest.
“I just think there’s a way you handle winning in this league,” LaFleur said to reporters following the game. “I've got a lot of respect for those guys we're competing against.”
Doing it out of respect certainly makes sense, but there is an NFL playoff tiebreaker involving points: the league counts net points as one of the 12 tiebreakers for playoff seeding. At a middling 6-8, the Packers are fighting for their playoff lives as it is, and they'll take all the help they can get as the postseason approaches.
If it does come down to point differential, that would be the seventh tiebreaker in the NFL's formula.
Matt LaFleur's decision also didn't make a lot of sports betters happy; the over/under was set at 40.5 points heading into Monday night, and 60 percent of bettors took the over, according to Sporting News' Joe Rivera. The game finished at 36 points total, but a touchdown would have pushed the score over 40.
The choice to kneel rather than going for a touchdown probably won't mean anything down the stretch, but if the Packers season does come down to a points tiebreaker, it could be the difference between qualifying for the playoffs or not.
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