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, you can't use them again – 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.
Week 4 was more or less smooth sailing for survivor pools, with the eight most popular teams winning their games. Only about 3% of the field was eliminated, thanks to losses by the Steelers (2%) and Saints (1%).
An easy week like that means we can expect to need to last longer to advance in survivor pools, which shifts the strategy a bit more towards saving teams for later in the season.
My favorite feature of the site is the ability to customize for your 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 Pool Genius' top option for small (fewer than 50), and large (1,000+) pools.
Besides that, Pool Genius tracks 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 the odds of winning.
Finally, Pool Genius uses 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 the 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: Cincinnati Bengals
With the same team listed as the best option in pools of any size, we're going to talk about the second-best option for massive pools. That's the Bengals, who are expected to be used by just four percent of the field, at least based on data early in the week.
The NFL betting public is understandably down on the Bengals. They came into the season expected to contend for the AFC title, but are just 1-3 and last place in the AFC North. That makes Week 5 a must-win for Cincinnati, as it travels to Arizona to take on the surprisingly competitive Cardinals.
Arizona is also 1-3, but its win was a massive upset over the heavily-favored Cowboys, and they've been more competitive than expected in all of their other games. Still, there are no moral victories in the NFL — or in survivor pools.
Cincinnati is the all-around better team here and should be able to find a way to win even if its passing attack remains limited by Joe Burrow's calf (and now Tee Higgins' ribs.) From a strategy standpoint, there are no weeks this season where they project as one of the top-four options, so we aren't sacrificing much future value. Coupled with how contrarian they are, they could be a massive edge on the field if any of the top two or three teams take the loss this week.
Small Field: Washington Commanders
We're assuming Baltimore, San Francisco, Detroit and Buffalo were the picks so far for smaller pools. With the relatively chalky Week 4 results, we're assuming it's still around 20 entrants left in pools of this size, so we're mostly optimizing for safety while still trying to leave some solid options for later on in the season.
That's why Washington is such an appealing pick. The Commanders are the third-likeliest team to win (second if you've used Detroit), but these are the best odds they'll have all season if current projections hold. We're losing nothing by using them this week, and gaining significant ground on the field if the much chalkier Dolphins are somehow upset by the Giants.
Even if Miami takes care of business, we're still getting a leg up on the field by rolling with Washington, as there are multiple weeks coming up when having the Dolphins available will be a massive edge. While we're not expecting to need to go all season in smaller pools, we might need the Dolphins as early as next week.
