In what was perhaps the game of the year in the NFL between the Chargers and the Raiders, Los Angeles head coach Brandon Staley’s late-game decision had the entire football world buzzing – perhaps for the wrong reasons.

With the two teams tied 32-32 in overtime, a wild playoff scenario was threatening to play out. Both teams were 9-7 and faced a win-and-in for the postseason, but in the unlikely event of a tie, both would make it at 9-7-1 as the sixth and seventh seeds (eliminating the Steelers). The Raiders had the ball with under a minute left and appeared set to play for the tie, running the ball on second down and letting the clock dwindle.

Then, with four seconds left on the play clock and 39 seconds left in regulation, Staley called a time out. A baffling decision at the moment, as it appeared the Raiders were set to take the clock down to the final seconds and possibly let the game end in a tie.

“We needed to get in the right grouping,” Staley said after the game. “We felt they were going to run the ball. We wanted to get our run defense in. [We made] that substitution so we could get a play that would deepen that field goal.”

The Raiders came back out of the time out and ran the ball on third down, so it didn’t appear that the time out changed their strategy. However, the defensive substitution didn’t work, and Las Vegas running back Josh Jacobs ran for 10 yards, getting the Raiders into field goal range.

Daniel Carlson then kicked a 47-yarder to win the game, 35-32 – knocking the Chargers out of the playoffs when a tie would have kept them in.

“We popped the run in there and gave us a chance to kick the field goal and win it,” Raiders head coach Rich Bisaccia said after the game. “We were certainly talking about [the tie] … [but] we had the big run. When we had the big run, it got us to what we thought was advantageous field-goal position for us. We were going to take the field goal to win it.”

It would seem that in the grand scheme of things, the time out didn’t have a huge effect on the game. The Raiders still played it conservative, running the ball on third down – and just happened to pick up enough yardage to win the game.

But Raiders quarterback Derek Carr did say the time out “definitely” changed the Raiders approach. And considering the end result, Staley’s decision will forever be a baffling one for a franchise that has had more than its’ fair share of disappointment over the years.

“It definitely did, obviously,” Carr said in his post-game interview with NBC’s Michelle Tafoya. “But we knew, no matter what, we didn’t want a tie. We wanted to win the football game.”