Last Man Standing: ‘Family contest’ turns into ‘nerve-wracking’ run to $150K

Jeff Gryczkowski entered Station Casinos’ Last Man Standing pro football contest for a fun family competition.

“It was kind of like a family contest, ‘Let’s see who gets the farthest,’ ” he said. “No one ever expected to win.”

Not only did Gryczkowski, 52, go further than his son Jesse, sister Jaime Holden and ex-brother-in-law Brent Holden, but he also outlasted a field of 7,141 contestants to turn his $25 entry into $150,000 after winning the elimination contest.

In Last Man Standing, entries pick one game against the spread each week and are eliminated with a loss. Entries cost $25 each, with a maximum of five for $100.

Gryczkowski picked 14 straight winners ATS, clinching the title in Week 14 when the Rams (-8½) erased an early 7-0 deficit en route to a 45-17 rout of the Cardinals. The other remaining entry had already been eliminated by the Ravens (-5½), who lost 27-22 to the Steelers, but Gryczkowski didn’t find out until his son saw the pick on X during the Rams-Cardinals game.

“When I knew the game was out of hand, I told my son, let’s go ahead and look and see what the other guy’s got,” he said. “I was like, ‘I just won this thing.’ It was incredible. I still can’t believe that I won it.”

Welcome to Las Vegas

A native of Buffalo and lifelong Bills fan, Gryczkowski’s family moved to Las Vegas when he was 10. He became interested in handicapping NFL games a few years later when his father won $1,000 in a free football contest in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which Gryczkowski delivered on his paper route.

“There was a contest in the sports section of the Review-Journal and you would cut it out and you would pick your outright winners and you would send it in, and if you went 16-0 you would win a thousand dollars,” he said. “My father would send it in and one time he went 16-0 and won the thousand dollars. That’s when I was like ‘How does this work?’ ”

Close calls

Married with two children and working in the retail grocery business for Schwan’s, Gryczkowski started the season with the maximum five entries but was down to only one after Week 4.

He survived his closest call in Week 5, when the Vikings (-3½) rallied for a 21-17 win and cover over the Browns in London on Carson Wentz’s 12-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Addison with 25 seconds left.

He was one of only four contestants remaining in Week 11, when he had the Packers as 6½-point favorites over the Giants. Green Bay missed two extra points and was leading by six before New York went ahead 20-19 on Jameis Winston’s 1-yard run with 7:22 left.

Needing a Packers touchdown and 2-point conversion to cover, Gryczkowski got it when Jordan Love hit Christian Watson for a 17-yard score with 4:02 to go and found Emanuel Wilson for the 2-point conversion for a 27-20 lead.

But it still wasn’t over. The Giants drove to the Green Bay 14 in the final minute before Winston threw an interception and Gryczkowski was finally able to exhale.

“That’s why I took the Packers. I was counting on Jameis Winston for two interceptions. He finally threw one at the end of the game,” he said. “That was a nerve-wracking game.

“It was pretty nerve-wracking toward the end (of the contest). I wanted it to be over one way or the other. I didn’t want to go through the agony anymore.”

Secrets to success

He advanced with the 49ers (-7½) in a Week 12 win over the Panthers, then won in Week 13 on Carolina, which beat the Rams 31-28 as a 10-point home underdog.

“I would always look at home ’dogs and try to make a case for that,” he said. “I was looking for powerful historical trends. That was one of my favorite things. And I was trying to avoid division matchups because you never know what’s going to happen in those.

“That was kind of my strategy — home ’dogs, historical trends and avoid division games if possible.”

Keep the faith

When the field was down to two after Week 12, Gryczkowski said he had conversations with his family and friends about whether he’d chop the pot for $75,000 each if the other finalist reached out to him. But the born-again Christian decided to keep the faith in his own picks.

“I didn’t really want to find him,” he said. “All the glory goes to God. This is all possible only because of him. I’m a nobody. I’m a square. I’m just doing this for fun, and there were so many picks that I was going to take that I didn’t. I was trusting in God.

“Then I thought about hedging. Should I at least get something out of this if I don’t win the whole thing? Should I put a couple thousand on the other side? But I stuck to my guns and I trusted in God and went the whole way.”