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.
The chalk took care of business again in Week 5, with both Miami and Detroit rolling to easy wins as the two most popular teams. It was a tough week to get contrarian, with the slightly popular Commanders taking out 9% of the field, while Buffalo and Baltimore took out another 6%.
With more than 15% of the field being eliminated, we're a step closer to the end in most smaller pools — here's how we'll look to make it one more week.
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: Los Angeles Rams
The Rams are one of the safest picks in Week 6, especially considering we're assuming that the large-field entrants have already utilized the Bills and Chiefs earlier in the season — as most entries that made it this far have. The Rams are just 2-3 but have arguably outperformed expectations this season, and the return of star wideout Cooper Kupp is expected to further aid the cause as he works back to full strength.
They draw a matchup with the lowly Cardinals, a team that's upset survivor pools already this season but has fallen back to earth after a surprisingly competent start. Arizona is also without its top running back in James Conner, which makes this matchup even more appealing than it was a week or two ago.
This is the Rams' home game against their division rival, which not coincidentally means it's the best odds we expect them to have all season. The only other time the Rams would conceivably be in play is Week 15 against the Commanders, but there's plenty of other teams projecting better that week–which contributes to the Rams' negligible future value.
It's also helpful that the field is somewhat light on the Rams, preferring to utilize powerhouse teams like Miami, Buffalo or Kansas City. If you've made it this far, you've probably used one or two of those three teams already, but keeping one in the back pocket for down the road is a big edge late in the season.
Small Field: Chiefs or Dolphins
With more than half of the field eliminated on average, these smaller-field contests are probably down to the teens in terms of entrants surviving this far. That means it's extremely unlikely that more than one team makes it the entire season, so planning for the later weeks of the season isn't necessary at this point.
Therefore, we're fine with optimizing for safety by using whichever powerhouse teams you have left. The Chiefs and Dolphins have identical expected values for Week 6, with the Bills (who we're assuming have already been used in smaller pools) nearly even with these teams. All three of these juggernauts are implied at 84% or better odds of handling business in Week 6, which is about as safe as we can expect to find in the NFL.
If you have both of these teams still available, my preference would be to use Kansas City. While both teams have similar future value overall, the Chiefs' value primarily comes in Week 12 or later. The Dolphins have the best projected odds in Week 8, a week that's fairly thin otherwise.
A pool of this size could very well wrap up before Week 12, so saving teams for that much later in the season isn't nearly as valuable. Thinking two or three weeks ahead is about as far as we need to look here, which means we'd love to have Miami for Week 8.
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