Trading for draft picks
| Week 17 Results | ||||
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| 160-96 7-9 |
140-116 10-6 |
140-116 6-10 |
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| Sunday, January 3, 2015 | ||||
| New Orleans @ Atlanta | Atlanta | New Orleans | Atlanta | |
| N.Y. Jets @ Buffalo | New York Jets | New York Jets | New York Jets | |
| Tampa Bay @ Carolina | Carolina | Tampa Bay | Carolina | |
| Detroit @ Chicago | Detroit | Detroit | Chicago | |
| Baltimore @ Cincinnati | Cincinnati | Baltimore | Baltimore | |
| Pittsburgh @ Cleveland | Pittsburgh | Cleveland | Pittsburgh | |
| Washington @ Dallas | Dallas | Dallas | Washington | |
| Jacksonville @ Houston | Houston | Houston | Houston | |
| Tennessee @ Indianapolis | Indianapolis | Indianapolis | Tennessee | |
| Oakland @ Kansas City | Oakland | Kansas City | Oakland | |
| New England @ Miami | New England | Miami | New England | |
| Philadelphia @ N.Y. Giants | New York Giants | Philadelphia | New York Giants | |
| Seattle @ Arizona | Arizona | Seattle | Seattle | |
| San Diego @ Denver | Denver | San Diego | Denver | |
| St. Louis @ San Francisco | St. Louis | San Francisco | St. Louis | |
| Minnesota @ Green Bay | Green Bay | Minnesota | Green Bay | |
| © 2015 Gehlke Bros. Football | ||||
With the 2015 Gehlke Bros. Football championship mathematically decided a week ago, there was nothing to play for in Week 17 but pride. In the case of the Senior Bro, it was an opportunity to finish another successful season in a victory flourish. For the Junior Bro, it was one more chance to flirt with fate as he threw power rankings and logic out the window to let his right brain walk on the wild side of football prognostication.
And for one bizarre Sunday in January, nonconformity prevailed.
For the third week in a row the Bros generated 11 splits, although this time there were no coin flips or consultations with Siri to guide Sean along his merry way; instead, he held the first-ever GBF lottery to determine his picks, placing the names of all 32 NawFuL teams into a bag and drawing them out one by one, taking whichever team came up first as his choice for each of the 16 games. It was a brilliantly insane strategy for what has always been one of the least predictable weeks of the season.
All 16 games were decided Sunday. In the morning session:
* The Saints beat the Falcons, 20-17: Sean wins.
* The Bengals got the season sweep of the Ravens, 24-16: Glenn wins.
* The Dolphins got even with the Patriots, 20-10: Sean gets another.
* The Steelers took down the Bowns, 28-12, and snuck into the playoffs: Glenn again.
* The Eagles swept the Giants, 35-30: Sean adds a third win.
* The Panthers beat the Buccaneers, 38-10, for their 15th win of the season: Glenn keeps pace. (And even by the most random prediction it's tough to pick against Carolina right now!)
The afternoon:
* The Seahawks slaughtered the Cardinals, 36-6, in a revenge game: Sean gets the advantage.
* The Broncos beat the Chargers, 27-20, to win the top seed in the AFC: Glenn gets his fourth (and last) victory.
* The Chiefs beat the Raiders, 23-17, for their 10th straight win: Sean gets his fifth win of the day.
* The 49ers beat the Rams in overtime, 19-16, and fire their coach anyway: Sean's sixth win.
The Sunday night game fittingly was also a split — our 90th of the season(!) — and it came down to the Vikings toppling the Packers from atop the NFC North for the first time in years, 20-13. It was the seventh split of the weekend for the Junior Bro, helping him put together a 3-game swing for the first time all season. Had he been able to do that earlier and more often...? What might have been.
It was, in short, a terrible season for Sean, made just a wee bit less terrible by winning Week 17 with a 10-6 record. Glenn will enjoy looking at the Surfy Trophy for another year, but he does so on a down note after going 7-9 in the final week, his only sub-.500 finish since Week 10. Ben wrapped things up at 6-10 for third place, losing sole possession of second spot in the overall standings as he fell into a tie with his uncle at 20 games back. We all correctly picked Houston for its win, and all missed Buffalo put an end to the Jets' playoff hopes.
Now it's time for the Gehlke Bros to clear out the virtual lockers for another season, but here first are some...
FINAL STATS:
GOOD BUT LESS GREAT: Glenn turned in another solid season, leading the standings from the opening kickoff to the final knee. And while his 20-game margin of victory is the largest in recorded GBF history, his win-loss record was off the pace he set in 2014. Glenn won with a record of 160-96, or a 62.5% rate of correct predictions. That was down 9 games from last year's 169-86-1 (66.2%). Sean and Ben were an identical 140-116 (54.7%). Sean saw an accuracy drop of 14 games from 154-101-1 (60.4%) a year ago, while Ben actually improved by 2 games from 138-117-1 (54.1%).
MAYBE WE SHOULD SPLIT THEM ALL: Things got just a bit crazy this year in the split department, even if you ignore the final three weeks of the season. The Bros combined for a record 90 splits, 33 of them coming in Weeks 15-17. Glenn won 55 while Sean took 35. The uptempo tone was set during opening week, when we saw 8 splits — by itself the most there had ever been in an opening weekend. We matched that mark again in Week 13. In all, there were nine weeks of at least 5 splits. There were seven weeks with an even number of splits, and 10 with an odd number. The 11 splits we created in Week 15 looked like a record that might stand for all time — until we did it again in Week 16 and then Week 17. That's the power of Sean's random picks in action, although it generally wasn't a successful recipe for a comeback; Sean lost 12 games in the standings in two weeks, gaining back three of them in the final week of the season.
THURSDAY, SUNDAY AND MONDAY NIGHT: As he did last year, the Senior Bro found the winning edge in splits that occurred outside of daylight on Sunday. He was 5-3 in Thursday games, 3-2 on Sunday night, and an incredible 6-1 on Monday night, further dispelling his longstanding stigma of being stung by the Monday Night Curse. Glenn also won the only Saturday split in Week 15.
WEEKLY RECORDS: With a 20-game margin of victory it is of little surprise that Glenn was a winner week in and week out most of the season. He attained the best record in eight weeks and tied for it in another three. His 14-2 mark in Week 3 was the best overall, and his 5-9 performance in Week 10 was his most major dud. Sean, meanwhile, won two weeks (10 and 17) and tied for best record in three others. His top mark of 12-4 in Week 3 was his best, and his 5-11 finish in Week 15 his worst, although it likely would have been better without the coin tosses. Ben was 4-2 in weekly wins and ties, notching a 12-2 best in Week 5 — when he was within one game of the overall lead — and a worst of 4-10 twice, in Weeks 10 and 11.
FEELS LIKE DEJA VU: After a dominating performance in 2014 that saw Glenn cruise to his second straight championship, repeating that feat seemed unlikely at best. But the Senior Bro launched his bid for a "three-peat" by taking a 4-game lead in the opening week and never looked back. He upped it to 6 games after three weeks before hitting a rough patch that saw the Junior Bro reduce the deficit to 3 games and "Chaos Kid" Ben move to within a single game of the overall lead in Week 5. But that was as close as things ever got.
This year saw the implementation of the weekly leader board graphic, and Sean spent most of the season with a red arrow under his record as the gap grew progressively wider with the passing weeks. Glenn rebuilt his advantage to 6 games with a three-game sweep in Week 6 and then added one game in each of the following three weeks. The backbreaker victories came just days apart, when the Ravens got their "kick-six" win at Cleveland on Monday night in Week 12, and then the Packers pulled off an incredible Hail Mary catch to stun Detroit on Thursday night in Week 13.
With his brother up by 11 games after Week 14 and with apparently little to lose, Sean pulled out all the stops to make a contest of it. He flipped a coin in Week 15, consulted with Apple's Siri app in Week 16, and drew names from a hat in Week 17 to generate the splits he had to have if he was going to claw his way back into contention. But in the end, Glenn won most of the random splits and coasted to his third straight title on Sunday afternoon in Week 16, riding as high as 23 games up before coming back to earth slightly for a 20-game margin of victory in Week 17. It is the first time since GBF went live in 1998 that Glenn has won three titles in a row and the first time there has been a 3-time winner since Sean got his fourth straight trophy in 2008.
That's the story line for 2015. We'll be back in September to see if Glenn can collect a fourth straight Surfy Trophy, or if Sean can return to championship form.
