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.
No major surprises in Week 8, as the seven most popular survivor teams all won their games. While the Chiefs' loss to the Broncos was a major real-life upset, they were only used by about 3% of the survivor field. All told, just 5% of active entries were eliminated in Week 8, so not much ground was picked up by advancing.
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Therefore, we should still plan on having to last 18 weeks in large field contests, while smaller pools remain a bad week or two away from wrapping up. Let's dig in to the best options in Week 9 for either type of contest below.
For that reason, we'll still want to target some contrarian options in order to reduce how many people we're likely to split the prize with if we do make it to the end.
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 and also includes tools for taking down the increasingly popular pick'em contests that feature massive prize pools.
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Large Field: Falcons
The $10 buy in DraftKings pool we're basing the "large field" contest segment on still has a bit over 4,000 entries remaining. The median outcome there has a couple hundred of those lasting all 18 weeks, which means maximizing your payout still comes down to being a bit contrarian.
That makes Atlanta a perfect option in Week 9. More than 80% of the field (as of Wednesday) in the typical contest is split between two teams — Cleveland and New Orleans — so if one or both of those were to lose we'd gain a massive edge by being on a different team.
By rostering the Falcons, we're only giving up about a 10% chance of a win based on the early week moneyline odds. While that's significant, it's not enough to justify eating the chalk on the popular teams, especially since neither are massive favorites. This could be a rough week in survivor contests with no team favored by more than 7.5 points, which is a massive opportunity to gain leverage on the field.
The other benefit to using the Falcons is their rest of season value — or lack thereof. This is the likeliest they'll be to win a game all season as it stands now, taking on a Viking team that just lost their starting quarterback. Minnesota may get Justin Jefferson back as early as Week 10, so this could be the only game all year they play without Jefferson and Kirk Cousins.
Since we're assuming we need to make it all 18 weeks, that's a big factor in larger contests. Save the better teams for later and roll the dice on Atlanta, while rooting for the chalk teams to lose.
Small Field: Saints or Browns
On the other hand, for smaller-field contests we're optimizing for safety, with New Orleans and Cleveland both identical -7.5 point favorites in Week 9. Contests this size are likely down to single-digit entries remaining, and are highly unlikely to make it the duration of the NFL season.
The Browns are slightly more likely to win their game based on the current moneyline odds, while also providiing slightly less future value down the stretch. However, both metrics are close, and Cleveland could potentially be more valuable depending on which other teams you've used. Looking at which weeks down the stretch you might want to use either team is one potential way to break the tie.
However, if you're able to view your opponent's selections prior to kickoff that would be my tiebreaker. On Sunday morning, you could count which of these two teams is used by less of your competitors — thus giving you more leverage in case either team loses.
If that's not an option, we should default to the Saints, as PoolGenius has them as somewhat less popular in Week 9. That's worth trading a bit of future value, especially since the next time they have 60% or better win odds isn't until Week 14. Pools this size probably won't last that long anyway.
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