An intern for Royals’ Class AA team won $300,000 thanks to the Bills’ backup tight end

Entering Monday night’s game at Tennessee, Bills tight end Tommy Sweeney had three receptions this season for 3 yards. You can probably do the math and figure out his yards per reception.

Sweeney, Buffalo’s backup tight end, had a catch in the Bills’ 34-31 loss to the Titans on Monday, and it was for just 1 yard. But it was also a touchdown on a pass from Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen, and that won Sam Danes a lot of money.

Danes, who was born in Olathe and spent the summer as an intern for Northwest Arkansas, the Royals’ Class AA affiliate, won more than $300,000 in a pair of DraftKings Monday Night showdown fantasy football competitions.

Contestants pick six players from the teams playing on a Monday night. They get fantasy points for the usual categories, such as yards, receptions and, this was big for Danes, touchdowns.

“I was pretty excited,” Danes wrote in a Twitter message. “I had a pretty good idea I had a chance of winning big when Sweeney caught the TD.”

Shoutout to the legend @Tommysweeney15 for that TD

— Sam (@SamDanes26) October 19, 2021

Danes tweeted that he started playing DraftKings’ golf games. As he built up his winnings, he won a really big prize and that allowed him to have multiple entries into some games.

On Monday, Danes had 13 entries in each of two contests: one cost $15 and the other was $222. The combined entry fees were a little more than $3,000 for Danes.

There were five players Danes used for multiple entries, so he took some chances on the sixth player. That makes sense, but why include Sweeney, whose career stats dating to 2019 are 12 catches for 108 yards? Heck, he scored his first career touchdown on Monday.

“I actually liked that his three catches were for 3 yards because that tells me that he is being used in short-yardage situations so he could potentially get a goal-line target and that’s what ended up happening,” Danes wrote.

“Most of the time your last guy in doesn’t need to score very many points and it’s always beneficial to do things that you know many others won’t. That’s what you have to do in big contests when you’re competing against tens of thousands of lineups.”

While Danes, who lives in Springdale, Arkansas, where the Naturals play, can take out that money whenever he wants, he doesn’t have any big plans on what to do with his winnings.

“I don’t really have any specific items that I plan on buying,” he said, “but I’ll probably do some traveling.”