No magic flags required
| Week 17 results | ||||
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| 157-99 9-7 |
172-84 10-6 |
130-126 9-7 |
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| Sunday, December 31, 2017 | ||||
| Green Bay @ Detroit | Detroit | Detroit | Green Bay | |
| Houston @ Indianapolis | Indianapolis | Indianapolis | Houston | |
| Chicago @ Minnesota | Minnesota | Minnesota | Chicago | |
| N.Y. Jets @ New England | New England | New England | New England | |
| Washington @ N.Y. Giants | Washington | Washington | New York Giants | |
| Dallas @ Philadelphia | Philadelphia | Dallas | Dallas | |
| Cleveland @ Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh | |
| Carolina @ Atlanta | Atlanta | Atlanta | Atlanta | |
| Cincinnati @ Baltimore | Baltimore | Baltimore | Cincinnati | |
| Buffalo @ Miami | Miami | Miami | Miami | |
| New Orleans @ Tampa Bay | New Orleans | New Orleans | Tampa Bay | |
| Kansas City @ Denver | Denver | Denver | Denver | |
| Oakland @ L.A. Chargers | L.A. Chargers | L.A. Chargers | L.A. Chargers | |
| San Francisco @ L.A. Rams | San Francisco | San Francisco | L.A. Rams | |
| Arizona @ Seattle | Seattle | Seattle | Seattle | |
| Jacksonville @ Tennessee | Tennessee | Tennessee | Tennessee | |
| © 2017 Gehlke Bros. Football | ||||
Sean remembers a time not so long ago when he was sitting in a pub watching his favorite 49ers lose to the Rams. “They had that game won before the refs started pulling the magic flags out of their asses.” Flash forward to Week 17, when the Niners looked again like the Stupor Bore contenders they once were, and no amount of “magic flags” or other obstacles would have been enough to derail the Junior Bro’s return to his status as Gehlke Bros. Football champion.
The inevitable triumph occurred even before the teams took to the field Sunday, as Glenn and Sean settled in for their weekly picks. With complete agreement on the first three games, the Junior Bro clinched the Surfy Trophy when he and Glenn both picked Detroit to defeat Green Bay. No coin flips. No magic flags. A fifth consecutive title was not in the cards for the Senior Bro this year. But there was room for one more split, one last meaningless game to settle a season that seemingly was settled weeks ago. And by that measure too, Sean also went out on top.
Dallas played at Philadelphia with little on the line besides bragging rights; the Eagles were already locked into position as the NFC’s top seed, and the Cowboys were preparing to head home for the winter. There was just one score the entire game, a fourth-quarter touchdown pass that proved the difference in the ‘Boys 6-0 victory (they couldn’t nail the extra point.) It was the Junior Bro’s 10th winning week in a dominant season that saw him finish 15 games up on his older brother, just one off his largest lead.
There will be plenty of partying in Hayward when the Surfy Trophy returns after a four-year absence. It ends the longest championship drought Sean has experienced since GBF went online in 1998. The Junior Bro closed out the 2017 campaign with a week-winning 10-6 record, followed by Glenn and Ben with identical 9-7 marks. We all shared our correct predictions of Atlanta, New England, Pittsburgh, Tennessee and the L.A. Chargers. No one picked Buffalo, Kansas City or Arizona to win.
YEAR-END RECAP
As always, this is the moment when we reflect on the season just past and haul out some interesting stats to pore over while you nosh on potato chips and sip champagne on New Year’s Eve…
BLISTERING PACE: To say that Sean stunk up the joint might be an understatement, as the Junior Bro cruised to a 172-84 record, for a 67.2 percent accuracy rating. That’s a big step up from last year’s 156-98-2 (61.3%), or 15 games. Glenn went the other direction, finishing 157-99 (61.3%) vs. 164-90-2 (64.5%) in 2016, a decline of 8 games. That 23-game swing between the Bros represents the difference between Glenn’s 8-game margin of victory last season and Sean’s 15-game blowout this year. Ben lived up to his “King Chaos” moniker, narrowly avoiding a losing record on the year by finishing 130-126 (50.8%). That is 17 games worse than his 146-108-2 (57.4%) finish of 2016, but in all honesty he said he was mailing it in during the latter weeks, which was reflected in the final numbers — and his finish of 42 games off the pace set by his uncle.
PIIICCCKKKS!: It was a fairly average year for splits, if not for the distribution of winners. We saw 59 splits overall, which was just two fewer than 2016. Sean dominated those, winning 37 while Glenn took 22. There was at least one split every week, and of note was that just one of those weeks ended in a tie: Week 16, when the Bros divided a pair of splits down the middle. That is amazing, given that six weeks featured an even number of splits while the remaining 11 were odd. The most splits we saw came in Week 4, when there were eight. The fewest was the lone split we had in Week 17.
SEAN WINS, AND WINS, AND WINS…: Your opponent can’t defeat you if you never lose, which is a simple explanation for how Sean dominated 2017. He won 10 weeks and tied for the best record in three others. That left Glenn with a 4-1 mark, most of that brief success coming in Week 11 and beyond. Ben… well, King Chaos was just 0-2. Sean had a weekly best of 14-2 in Weeks 2 and 15. His low point came when he went 7-9 in Weeks 3 and 14. Glenn went 13-3 twice, in Week 2 — a losing effort — and Week 12. But he finished below .500 on four occasions during a 7-week stretch of bad luck, hitting a worst of 5-9 in Week 6. Ben’s best mark was 14-2 in Week 2, his worst a 4-12 in Week 15.
NEVER ON A SUNDAY (NIGHT): There were many ways in which the Senior Bro’s season went wrong, but one of the most significant was in night games, Sunday in particular. Sean owned Sunday night, going 10-5 and winning five of six splits. In all, night games accounted for 13 splits, with Sean taking nine of them to Glenn’s four. Sean was also 15-2 on Monday night, taking two of three splits there. Thursday was tough on everyone, with both Bros going 7-8.
MY FAVORITE TEAM: While Gehlke Bros. Football isn’t about rooting for favorite teams, in any given year there are some teams you love picking… and others you loathe. For whatever reason you feel like you’ve got a crystal ball and can predict every victory and every stumble, whether they are playoff-bound or headed for a coaching change. And then there are others which, no matter which way you pick, they burn you week after week. For Sean, Cincinnati proved the most helpful. He was 11-5 with them, winning all four splits they participated in. His Achilles heel was Minnesota, which left him at 9-7 with a net deficit of four splits. For Glenn it was nearly opposite. The Senior Bro was 13-3 with the Vikings, taking five of six splits. His worst team… well, there were many… proved to be Denver, with which he was a meager 4-12 and a net deficit of four games after six splits. A close second in Glenn’s I-Hate-You department was Miami — 5-11 with zero victories in four splits. Our most-split team was Philadelphia (8 times), followed by Atlanta (7). There was just one team we were in complete agreement on, and that was Green Bay. The Packers ended their disappointing season at 7-9, but the Bros were 13-3 with them, without a single split.
WHAT GOES AROUND: Sean lamented on Christmas Day 2016, after another losing week in his fourth straight losing season, that he would “never win that trophy” back. We all knew that wasn’t true, but when you’re in a rut it seems to go on forever. There were no ruts in the 2017 season for the Junior Bro. Well, perhaps just one. It came in Week 3, after he had notched a three-game lead to open the season, when the Senior Bro made things interesting with a three-game sweep to tie the standings. It was the closest the defending champ would come in his failed quest for a fifth consecutive GBF title.
Beginning in Week 4, Sean went on a split-devouring rampage that saw him go 23-7 over seven weeks, effectively putting away the title before Glenn regained his footing. The bye weeks might well have been the bye-bye weeks, as the Junior Bro notched his largest lead on the season at 16 games in Week 10. Glenn had just a little to be thankful for when Thanksgiving rolled around and the 16-game schedules returned. He managed to win three of the next four weeks, whittling the deficit to a mere 11 games before reverting to his losing ways to close out the final three weekends. But the Senior Bro saw the handwriting on the wall well before then, when he fell 10 games behind on a Monday night in Week 7 with the Redskins losing at Philadelphia. No one had ever recovered from that large a deficit to win a Gehlke Bros. Football championship. And no one would this year.
Sean’s 15-game rout marked the third time in the past four seasons that the champion prevailed by double digits. But after enduring years of disappointment Sean deserved a decisive victory. Will this be the start of a new winning streak for the Junior Bro? The answer lies only as far away as September, when GBF returns for another NawFuL season of picks and splits. We’ll have coverage of the trophy passing ceremony soon, and until then enjoy the playoffs and Stupor Bore LXII.
