If you've followed this article's recommendations (while playing in the same contests), you've got one entry remaining thanks to the Texans getting through in the RotoGrinders Second Chance Survivor contest I'll dig into more below.
Everything else has been eliminated, but, in the interest of continuing to use the PoolGenius tool, I'll be proceeding with the most popular available winner in the other two contests we look at. In both cases, that would've been San Francisco.
That brings us to our NFL survivor pool strategy for Week 5.
The concept is simple: Pick one team that wins an NFL game every week. No spreads or totals, just winners. Once you use that team, they're done — creating an element of strategy and long-term planning that makes these contests deceptively difficult.
Fortunately, this year, we're partnering with our friends at PoolGenius to make things easier. They've built slate-leading tools to help conquer a variety of pool contests, including survivor.
My favorite feature of the site is the ability to customize for your individual pool type. Factors like contest size and payout structure are a huge factor in survivor contests as smaller fields generally don't have any entries make it all 18 weeks.
To give a glimpse of how that works, all season I'll be providing their top option for small (less than 100), and large (1,000+) entry pools.
Besides that, PoolGenius tracks pick selection data to help figure out contrarian options. This is helpful in larger pools since we're also trying to optimize for expected value.
Finally, they use projected future spreads to assign a future value to each team — which includes considering the scarcity of strong options on certain weeks. This is crucial, as we don't want to burn the best teams when there are other strong options that week.
To get their full data, you'll need to sign up for the site. It's well worth it though, and it also includes tools for taking down the increasingly popular pick'em contests that feature massive prize pools.
NFL Survivor Pool Strategy Week 5
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Large Field Survivor Pick: Jacksonville Jaguars
Despite the blood bath that survivor pools have been this season, in massive pools like the DraftKings contest I'm basing this entry on, it's still relatively likely that multiple entrants make it to the final week.
It's also a very tricky spot if you've used both the Seahawks and 49ers, as they're the only teams with market odds of 70% or higher this week.
The top pick based on the PoolGenius tool is the Chiefs (who we'll get to later), with the Jaguars coming in second. I prefer the Jags in pools this size though.
They'll be much less popular than Kansas City, but more importantly this might be the most they're favored in a game all season. On the other hand, the Chiefs have six other games where they're projected to be safer picks than this week, plus will hopefully getting key players back from injury (or trading for a wide receiver) before then.
Jacksonville plays the Colts, who could be without both their starting quarterback and running back in Week 5. Keep an eye on their injury report, if Indianapolis looks healthy a pivot to the Bears makes sense — they're another team with similar Week 5 odds and limited future value.
Small Field: Kansas City Chiefs
The specific pool I've based this entry on this year has just four of the 100 original entrants still alive heading into Week 5. Only one of those still has the Chiefs available as an option.
If you're in a similar spot with very few entrants remaining, solving for the highest probable winner is probably correct. Especially if you can easily see (or figure out) which teams your competition still has available.
I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of win probability if I knew I'm the only one who still has a team available, but otherwise it's all about the safest option. The two most likely winners this week (San Francisco and Seattle) were both popular at different points in the season, so it's relatively likely that most of the field no longer has them as an option.
RotoGrinders Second Chance Survivor: San Francisco 49ers
If you've been following this columns picks exactly, you got through in this contest with a Texans win in Week 4. Normally I wouldn't feel great about only having one out of three entrants remaining, but given that most pools are well under 10% alive (even those that started in Week 2), that's a fairly decent result.
This specific pool has 78 remaining entries, with two-team weeks starting in Week 16. The likeliest outcome is a winner is decided in Weeks 16 or 17, with a potential tie as multiple entrants are eliminated in the same week.
I say all of this to highlight that future value isn't particularly important. On top of that, only 36 of the surviving 78 have the 49ers available this week (with 56 having Seattle).
That means that if the 49ers win and any of the other popular teams lose, you'll move past a good chunk of the field. That's worth missing out on their late-season value for.
