This column's recommendations have officially been eliminated, with our last surviving entry losing thanks to the Cardinals upset of the 49ers. For the sake of clarity, we'll proceed with the most popular available choice in each of the pools we're looking at. With the two most popular teams (San Francisco and Seattle) both losing, that means Washington across the board in all of our hypothetical pools.
That brings us to our NFL survivor pool strategy for Week 6.
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, it's done, creating an element of strategy and long-term planning that makes these contests deceptively difficult.
NFL Survivor Pool Strategy Week 6
Fortunately, this year we're partnering with our friends at Pool Genius 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, Pool Genius 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 Pool Genius' 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.
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Week 6 Survivor Pick for Large Fields: Green Bay Packers
Roughly 1.5% of the 18,000+ entries that started the DraftKings Main Event Survivor Pool I'm basing this section on have made it to Week 6. That's an absurdly low survival rate, yet we still expect multiple entries to make it to Week 18 based on the Optimal Path tool at Pool Genius, which suggests a roughly 3% chance of making it until the bitter end.
Due to that, there's still value in avoiding the chalky teams, as it allows you to get leverage on the field. That's both immediate leverage — if the popular team loses — but also down the road, as you'll have a team available that your competitors won't.
With the Eagles justifiably likely to be popular this week, pivoting makes sense. By going down to the Packers, you're giving up 10% "win equity" this week, but saving a much more valuable team down the stretch.
That makes the Packers worth the risk here, or in any contest with more than 50 or so remaining entrants.
Small Field: Philadelphia Eagles
The pool I've been basing this entry on wrapped up in Week 5, with all four of the remaining players being eliminated with either the 49ers or Seahawks. That means if you played the Chiefs in a similar contest, congrats! You've already won.
If you're in a similar pool with a few surviving teams, the Eagles are an easy choice. There's almost zero chance that pools of this size make it to Week 14, which is the next time the Eagles are favored this heavily. Therefore, the future value you give up is essentially worthless.
With that said, it could be worth taking a peek at what teams your competitors have available. If the rest of the field still has the Eagles, taking a swing at another team (Green Bay) and hoping for an upset is a risky, but potentially valuable, strategy.
RotoGrinders Second Chance Survivor: Baltimore Ravens
The RotoGrinders pool is down to just 27 surviving entries. In a single-pick pool, that would make it roughly a tossup to go all 18 weeks. However, this particular pool requires two teams from Week 16 on, so the likeliest ending point is probably Week 16 itself.
This all makes it worthwhile to hold on to the Eagles in this contest, given themassive value in their Week 14 home matchup against the Panthers.
That leaves us with Baltimore and Green Bay as remaining options. The tool suggests the Packers as the best option, which I personally agree with. If you are still alive in multiple survivor pools (how?!), it does make sense to diversify, though, so the Ravens are a solid alternate option.
