Week 2 was an easy one in the NFL Survivor streets with both recommended picks from Pool Genius – and a majority of public selections – all moving on.
Still, there were some smaller upsets, like the Lions (used by 6% of entrants) losing to the Seahawks and the Broncos (3%) losing to the Commanders. That means surviving entries are a bit closer to the prize pool than they were a week ago as we enter NFL Week 3.
The survivor concept is simple: Pick one team to win 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.
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 such as contest size and payout structure are a huge factor in survivor contests as smaller fields generally don't have any entries that survive all 18 weeks.
To give a glimpse of how that works, I'll be providing their top option for small (fewer than 50), medium (roughly 100) and large (1,000+) entry pools.
Besides that, they track pick selection data to help figure out contrarian options. This is helpful in larger pools since we're trying to optimize for expected value more than just odds of winning.
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 also includes tools for taking down the increasingly popular pick'em contests that feature massive prize pools.
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Large Field: Jacksonville
There are four teams this week favored by 10 or more points, giving us plenty of options to choose from in Survivor. Unless you have a strong feeling about one team being more or less likely to win than the spread implies, it makes sense to base your decision around other factors.
In large public pools, we expect the winner to need to make it all 18 weeks to win. Therefore, in situations like this, it makes sense to base our decision on which team we'll be least likely to need to use in the future. In this case, it's Jacksonville. They're implied for only 70% or better odds to win in two more weeks this season, and both of those weeks have considerably better options.
While it would be nice to pick up some leverage on the field by going with a contrarian choice, the top four teams are all reasonably similar in popularity. This week, we'll get our edge by saving stronger teams for later rather than going off the board with our current pick. Jacksonville is also the recommended option for medium-sized contests this week.
Small Field: Dallas
In smaller "friends and family" style pools, the expectation is that the contest is likely to wrap up sometime before the conclusion of the NFL season. Exactly when depends on the number of entrants, specific pool rules, and if any chalky picks happen to lose in a given week.
Either way, that lessens the value of saving teams for later while increasing the value on safer picks, as well as more contrarian picks.
Rarely do we get options that provide both safety and leverage, which is what makes the Cowboys an excellent pick this week. They're expected to be slightly less popular than both Jacksonville and Kansas City – but with better implied odds than the Jaguars and roughly the same as the Chiefs.
While they have considerably more future value than Jacksonville, realistically the next time we'd be tempted to use them isn't until Week 10 or so, as there are other stronger options in all the weeks between now and then. There's a nonzero chance pools of this size wrap up before then as evidenced by the Optimal Path Tool on Pool Genius. Assuming Buffalo and Baltimore have already been used, the safest path is still only 10% to make it through 11 weeks:
Additionally, a lot can change between now and then. The Cowboys could lose key players to injuries and be significantly less attractive, or other teams could emerge as strong options based on playing better than expected.
We'll lock in Dallas in small pools and cross our fingers that Jacksonville or Kansas City gets upset in Week 3.
