A German man was minutes away from hitting the jackpot Tuesday until Leroy Sane’s goal to increase Manchester City’s advantage over AS Monaco cost him £29,000 (€34,000).

Before the goal, the punter was probably in disbelief as his audacious gamble began to materialise in the final minutes of Tuesday’s Champions League fixtures.

Mustafa Celik placed a bet predicting the correct scoreline in both matches, according to The Telegraph’s Callum Davis, with Atletico Madrid’s 4-2 win over Bayer Leverkusen giving him half a chance at winning the ultimate prize.

A go-ahead goal from John Stones to lift Manchester City into a 4-3 lead over AS Monaco put him on course to collect. However, disaster struck five minutes later when Sane got on the end of Sergio Aguero’s pass, sending City fans into a frenzy while ruining Celik’s day.

“You owe me €34,000,” Celik tweeted at Sane with a picture of his betting slip attached.

The Germany international offered a sympathetic message to his compatriot the following day:

Let’s just hope Celik didn’t place money on Claudio Bravo scarfing down a pie on the bench.

Related: Wayne Shaw resigns from Sutton amid pie bet investigation

Patriots backup QB Jimmy Garoppolo is the subject of trade speculation thanks in large part to his very strong performance in two starts early in the 2016 season. But how much do just 63 pass attempts tell us about how good a quarterback he’s likely to be?

Garoppolo averaged 7.9 yards per attempt and posted an 88.7 QBR in 2016, both of which are excellent figures. But it’s such a small sample size that it’s unwise to assume he’ll continue at that pace. On the other hand, he did play well for two starts, so his underlying potential is more likely to be good than if he had been mediocre in the same short span. It’s not much, but there is some information to be gleaned.

To quantify just how much weight we should put on that two-game performance, we can use something called Bayes’ theorem, which allows us to systematically update our beliefs as new information arrives. In this case, we can begin with the belief that Garoppolo is drawn from the distribution of QB talent found in the NFL. Then, with every dropback he makes, we can update our belief about where his talent level lies. This approach not only tells us what our best guess of his underlying talent level should be, but also tells us how much uncertainty there should be around that best guess.

Our starting point is the fact that Garoppolo is drawn somewhere from the pool of QB talent typically found in the NFL. Great QBs like his teammate Tom Brady are rare, as are very poor QBs. Although below-average QBs can be found anywhere, they’re weeded out of the league fairly efficiently. So QBs with near league-average talent levels make up the bulk of the population on NFL rosters. Our belief starts with stating that Garoppolo’s true talent level lies somewhere on that spectrum from poor to great, so we can create a probability distribution that best matches the actual distribution of talent. Without knowing anything else about an NFL QB, this distribution captures our prior belief about how good he is.

Then he makes his first throw and we have the tiniest better idea of how good he is. Then, after another throw, we have an ever so slightly better idea of how good he is. We continue to update our belief until after enough dropbacks that we can be confident that he’s actually as good (or bad) as what we’ve seen so far. For a guy like Garoppolo with only 63 attempts over two starts, and a total of 94 attempts through his three seasons, our uncertainty remains very large.

Using just pass attempts from 2016, our updated best guess of his talent level is 7.0 yards per attempt (YPA), which is much closer to league average than his raw average to date. This result underscores the fact that 63 attempts is far too little information to have any confidence in his underlying talent level. In fact, something called a 95 percent confidence interval, which tells us a range of results we can safely bet on, spans from well below average to superstar levels. It would take 500 attempts averaging 7.9 YPA before we could confidently say a QB is above average, and it would take about 1,000 attempts, or about two full seasons, before we realistically could be confident in what kind of talent level a QB has. (Using all 94 of his career attempts yields about the same results.)

Any team considering a trade for Garoppolo should put very little weight in what we saw in 2016.

Of course, for potential bidders like the Bears, Browns and 49ers, the real question isn’t so simple. It’s not a question of Garoppolo or not, but a question of Garoppolo or their next-best option, which is most likely a first-round draft pick such as Mitch Trubisky (North Carolina) or Deshaun Watson (Clemson). And first-round picks carry their own uncertainty. As a group, since 2000, first-round QBs have a career average of 6.8 YPA, with a range of uncertainty even larger than for a player like Garoppolo with 63 throws in two starts.

As little as we know about how good Garoppolo really is, we know even less about a generic first-rounder, plus our best guess at Garoppolo’s underlying talent is slightly higher. With this method, we can even estimate the probability that Garoppolo would be better than the generic first-round QB, given certain assumptions. With what we’ve seen so far, there’s a 59 percent chance Garoppolo would turn out better. If we repeat the same analysis but instead use a more advanced metric of performance — expected points added — we get very similar results: a 64 percent chance that Garoppolo is better than a generic-first rounder.

To get a more intuitive sense of this analysis, the chart below plots our best estimate of a QB who averages 7.9 YPA after a varying number of attempts. The blue line shows that after only a few attempts, our estimate should be close to league average, but as the number of attempts increases, our estimate should approach his actual average. The green line indicates the average YPA for the generic first-round QB, and the red line is the league average overall. The shaded areas depict the uncertainty we should have about where the true average lies. In this case, the mean will be within the shaded area about 67 percent of the time.

For more from ESPN Analytics, visit the ESPN Analytics Index.

PITTSBURGH — The Steelers’ offseason begins in earnest once they slap that franchise tag on Le’Veon Bell. But the franchise’s plan for the next six months won’t look much different from last year: Supplement an already talented roster with wise free-agency moves and deft drafting.

Now, with the NFL combine a week away, the Steelers have the next six months to get better.

Here’s a look at some key themes this offseason:

Free-agency plans intensify: The team will formulate this soon, probably before arriving in Indianapolis for the combine early next week. Most teams meet with the agents of their in-house free-agent players in this setting. Throughout these talks, the Steelers will prioritize their dozen-plus free agents while simultaneously targeting players on the open market who fit their identity.

Protect this house: Some of the Steelers’ biggest moves will be made with their own players. The team has begun negotiations with Drew Rosenhaus, the agent for Antonio Brown and free-agent linebacker Lawrence Timmons. Brown and Bell will be the priority. The team is on record that they want both in black and gold for the long term. That requires spending. The bad news for the Steelers: Brown will no longer play on the league’s best bargain deal. The good news: Brown probably has three prime years left and should validate any new deal.

Less contract maneuvering: The Steelers have restructured several contracts over the past few years, including those of Mitchell, Maurkice Pouncey and Marcus Gilbert. But the team also showed restraint in 2016 by not redoing Timmons, who played on a $15.1 million cap hit. With more than $30 million in projected cap space, the Steelers don’t really need to rework Roethlisberger’s $100 million contract, or anyone else’s, at least not out of desperation.

The NFL combine is less than two weeks away, and days after that the free agency period will begin with the start of the new league year. So it’s time for the Detroit Lions — and every other team in the NFL — to begin to take stock of what they have and where they can upgrade and improve.

With that in mind, we’ll do that as well with every position on the Lions roster leading into next week’s combine. And just a reminder that things can change incredibly quickly over the next few weeks as Detroit decides which players to re-sign and let go.

Today we’ll look at a position the Lions might end up overhauling: Tight end.

Under contract: Eric Ebron (starter), Cole Wick, Khari Lee, Kennard Backman

Free agents: Matthew Mulligan, Tim Wright, Clay Harbor

Chances Lions bring back their own free agents: Mulligan and Wright would seem like possibilities, at least to compete for jobs. The Lions held on to Wright throughout the season after he tore his ACL, and he can be a receiving threat as a tight end. Mulligan is a blocking tight end the Lions found use for throughout the season. Of course, there’s a chance Detroit could upgrade the position entirely outside of Ebron — and the Lions have to decide at some point this offseason whether they’ll pick up Ebron’s fifth-year option for 2018 as well.

What do the Lions need between free agency and the draft: This is an area Detroit could try to make a big splash. But there will likely be a combination of free agency and the draft here. If the Lions were to decide not to pick up the fifth-year option on Ebron, the position becomes a high priority for the future as well.

Three free agents to look at:

Martellus Bennett, New England: One of the more entertaining talkers in the NFL, Bennett is also the biggest prize out there in this position group. The 29-year-old has moved around throughout his career, spending four seasons in Dallas, one with the New York Giants, three with Chicago and last season winning a Super Bowl with the Patriots. He has scored three or more touchdowns every year since 2012 and has been durable, playing all 16 games four of the past five seasons. This would be a large investment, but if the Lions wanted to try and diversify their offense — and give Matthew Stafford another big, reliable target — they could look at Bennett. Plus, Bennett is an exceptional blocker, making him a complete tight end and a high-value target around the league.

Jake Butt, Michigan: He has the talent to be a high-end draft pick, but a torn right ACL in December’s Orange Bowl will likely knock him down some draft boards. If he’s around in the second or third round, he could be a value pick for Detroit and give the franchise insurance in future years with Ebron. Butt had 138 career catches for 1,646 yards and 11 touchdowns at Michigan. This would be a long-term pick, but one that could be a wise investment, depending what doctors say.