Senior Bro wins playoff, first title in 7 years
| Playoff results | ||||
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| 175-96-1 9-4 |
175-96-1 7-6 |
184-87-1 0-0 |
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| Saturday, January 10, 2026 (Wild Card) | ||||
| L.A. Rams @ Carolina | L.A. Rams | L.A. Rams | ||
| Green Bay @ Chicago | Chicago | Chicago | ||
| Sunday, January 11, 2026 (Wild Card) | ||||
| Buffalo @ Jacksonville | Buffalo | Buffalo | ||
| San Francisco @ Philadelphia | Philadelphia | Philadelphia | ||
| L.A. Chargers @ New England | New England | New England | ||
| Monday, January 12, 2026 (Wild Card) | ||||
| Houston @ Pittsburgh | Houston | Houston | ||
| Saturday, January 17, 2026 (Divisional) | ||||
| Buffalo @ Denver | Buffalo | Buffalo | ||
| San Francisco @ Seattle | Seattle | Seattle | ||
| Sunday, January 18, 2026 (Divisional) | ||||
| Houston @ New England | New England | Houston | ||
| L.A. Rams @ Chicago | L.A. Rams | Chicago | ||
| Sunday, January 25, 2026 (Championship) | ||||
| New England @ Denver | New England | Denver | ||
| L.A. Rams @ Seattle | L.A. Rams | L.A. Rams | ||
| Sunday, February 8, 2026 (Super Bowl) | ||||
| Seattle vs New England (Santa Clara) | New England | Seattle | ||
| © 2026 Gehlke Bros. Football | ||||
For the first time since Gehlke Bros. Football went online in 1998, Glenn and Sean are tied at the end of the regular season and using the postseason as a tiebreaker. Unlike the regular season, picks are being submitted double-blind to Ben and revealed prior to game time.
WILD CARD ROUND — Jan. 10-12: There were no splits in picks revealed Saturday afternoon. Glenn and Sean went 5-1, the only miss coming when the 49ers defeated the defending champion Eagles, 23-19, to earn a rematch with the NFC's top seeded Seahawks next Saturday. That was one of four high-drama finishes that also included the Bears overcoming an 18-point deficit to beat the Packers, 31-27. The Rams held off the Panthers in a 34-31 seesaw contest, and the Bills and Jaguars put up four touchdowns in the final quarter with Buffalo prevailing, 27-24. The final scores were more lopsided in the Patriots' 16-3 domination of the Chargers, and it was the Texans busting things open late in a sloppy 30-6 win at the Steelers.
DIVISIONAL ROUND — Jan. 17-18: It was another weekend of high drama that saw the Senior Bro deliver what may have been a knockout blow in the overtime battle for this year’s Surfy Trophy. The Bros mirrored each other in Saturday’s picks, each taking Buffalo over Denver and Seattle over San Francisco. It looks like Josh Allen will have to wait another year for a shot at a Stupor Bore title after he and the Bills fell to the Broncos in overtime, 33-30, in a game that cost Denver QB Bo Nix a season-ending broken ankle and Bills coach Sean McDermott his job. Meanwhile, the injury-depleted 49ers proved no match for the Seahawks in their second meeting in two weeks, falling 41-6 in a game that saw Seattle score the winning touchdown barely 13 seconds into the first quarter, with Rashid Shaheed taking the opening kickoff 95 yards for the score.
Glenn and Sean split both of the Sunday games. In the early contest, the Patriots intercepted Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud four times and overcame their own sloppy offense in snowy Foxborough to capture a 28-16 win, earning a trip to Denver next Sunday. New England’s win gave Glenn a leg up headed into the late game between the Rams and Bears that turned into a nail-biter. At snowy Soldier Field with the temperature hovering around 18 degrees, the two teams went to halftime with the score knotted at 10-10. Chicago’s fearsome defense mostly kept the Rams in check until the fourth quarter when L.A. broke through with a 91-yard drive that ended in a 5-yard Matthew Stafford touchdown to Kyren Williams. The Rams appeared headed to victory when they held the Bears to a 4th-and-4 with 27 seconds left in regulation. But on the next play, Bears QB Caleb Williams scrambled nearly 20 yards away from pursuing defenders and hurled a blind pass that went about 35 yards into the arms of Cole Kmet for an improbable game-tying touchdown that sent the contest to overtime. The Rams failed to score on the first possession of OT, and Chicago was on the move for a likely field goal to end things when Caleb Williams tossed a deep pass that was intercepted by Kam Curl. With new life, the Rams drove 54 yards in 10 plays over 6:39 to seal the victory on Harrison Mevis’ 42-yard field goal. Final score: 20-17 — and thunderous cheers from Glenn’s living room as the result earned him a 2-game lead in the postseason standings with three games remaining. Said Sean afterward, “I’ll start polishing the trophy.” But with as crazy as the 2025 GBF season has been so far, it is still too early to put a name to this year’s champion.
CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS — Jan. 25: The Senior Bro’s 7-years-long championship drought officially came to an end Sunday in the AFC Championship game between New England and Denver. It was the only split for the weekend, and a game Sean would have to win if he hoped to extend the contest to the Super Bowl in two weeks. But he faced long odds in the Broncos, who despite being the top-seeded team in the conference would be relying on their backup quarterback, Jarrett Stidham, after losing starter Bo Nix to a season-ending ankle fracture the previous weekend. The game started under sunny skies and 24-degree temperatures, but steadily turned into a snow bowl by the fourth quarter.
Denver struck first less than 5 minutes into the game when Stidham hit Marvin Mims Jr. with a 52-yard pass that set up Courtland Sutton’s 6-yard TD two plays later. The Patriots couldn’t get much going until Stidham fumbled just before halftime deep in Broncos territory, and two plays later Drake Maye made a 6-yard rush to the end zone to tie the game at 7-7. New England would start the third quarter with a clock-consuming 9-and-a-half-minute drive that concluded with an Andy Borregales 23-yard field goal to make it 10-7. The score would remain that way as weather conditions deteriorated and both teams missed field goals as they tried to kick into the blinding snow and swirling winds at Empower Field. With the game outcome hanging in the balance, New England was forced to punt the ball away with about 3:11 remaining, the Broncos looking for a field goal to tie it up but still with time to make a game-winning touchdown drive… and then it happened.
Glenn, who had been watching the game in the living room, heard a crash in the bedroom where he had earlier been painting the ceiling. Out ran his two cats, Smokey and Phyre, the latter of which was covered in paint and tracking it across the living room carpet. Apparently the cats had chased each other to the spot where Glenn had temporarily stored the paint pan while watching the end of the game. It was all hands on deck to catch the cat and clean the paint off the carpet, and in the chaos Glenn missed the critical interception by Patriots’ defender Christian Gonzalez as Stidham tried to heave a deep pass toward the end zone. Denver burned its final timeout and had a fleeting chance of getting the ball back until an encroachment penalty gave the Pats an automatic first down that allowed them to run out the clock and advance to the Super Bowl for the first time since 2018 — coincidentally the last time the Senior Bro won the Surfy.
The Patriots will face Seattle, who held off the Rams in the later NFC Championship game, 31-27. The game will be a rematch of Super Bowl XLIX 11 years ago, won by the Pats, 28-24. For the Bros, picking the final game of the season becomes an academic exercise with the Senior Bro leading by 3 games, but under the rules of the GBF playoff system we will pick the entire slate of 13 games plus make a prediction of the final score. Meanwhile, the Senior Bro can finally exhale and bask in the painted yellow glow of his first season title of the 2020s.
SUPER BOWL LX — Feb. 8: The season’s final game lived down to its somewhat snoozy reputation when the Seahawks and Patriots met in Santa Clara on Sunday. It was a meaningless game for the Bros, the Surfy Trophy already decided in Glenn’s favor two weeks earlier, although bragging rights were on the line with Glenn taking New England while Sean went with Seattle. In what could have been a tie-breaker had it come down to it, the Bros also took a guess at the final score, the winner coming closest to the total points scored: Glenn said 23-21 (44 points total), while Sean had 27-19 (46).
The game quickly turned into a defensive battle, the Seahawks scoring nothing but field goals while the Patriots managed nothing but punts in a first half that finished with a 9-0 Seattle lead. The Seahawks would make it 19-0 before New England scored its first points of the game early in the fourth quarter on Mack Hollins’ 35-yard TD pass from Drake Maye. But any hopes of a Patriots comeback died when Maye later tossed an interception that went the opposite way for a Seahawks touchdown to make it 29-7 with 4:27 remaining. New England would add a meaningless 6-pointer ahead of the two-minute warning for what would be the final of 29-13. Sean won the split on Seattle, but even though the Junior Bro was very close to the winning score, Glenn was closest to the 42 total points scored (+2) vs. Sean (+4).
In the end, the Senior Bro wins the playoff round by 2 games and will hoist the Surfy Trophy for the first time in 7 years after one of the most thrilling seasons in GBF history. We’ll have our full stats recap and awards ceremony coverage in the weeks ahead.
