As a longtime survivor pool player — and one-time winner — I’m thrilled that we have added survivor pool coverage to our industry-best suite of NFL tools.
In the old days, before the season started, I would manually build out a table with every NFL team’s projected chance of winning every game of the season. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, but a valuable one for survivor contests.
In survivor pools, the aim is simple: pick one team each week, and if they win, you survive. However, you can use each team only once. That means finding the optimal spot to use the best teams in the league is important to avoid being in a tough position later in the season.
Being able to visualize each team’s odds at various points is crucial, as it helps you avoid situations where you can’t use any of the week’s strong favorites. Our new tool does exactly that — plus includes the projected popularity of each team for the current week, as well as their aggregate “future value” at a glance:
The tool also allows you to mark which teams you’ve already used, eliminating them from the full season table:
Before we get into my favorite Week 2 options, here’s a reminder of some general survivor pool strategy.
General Strategy
Much like daily fantasy sports, survivor pools are more about overall strategy than predicting the outcome of football games.
While the obvious goal is to survive as long as possible, the actual aim is to survive longer than your opponents. Most pools pay out only to the first-place finisher, with the prize pool chopped in case multiple entrants last the entirety of the season.
That means not all winning weeks are created equal, as advancing on a week where other entries fail is more valuable. That gives us a third variable to consider in our selections. Not only are the team’s odds of winning and future value important, but their popularity is as well.
If you can fade a popular team with strong future value and advance, it’s a double-whammy of leverage. Not only were you unique this week, but you’ll also be able to use a team that most of the field doesn’t have later in the season.
It’s also vital to consider your pool’s settings and size. Some pools have different rule sets, including weeks with multiple picks, whether ties count as a win or not, and even potentially opportunities to return following a loss. For this column I’ll be assuming a standard rule set, where one loss is an elimination and there are no multi-pick weeks.
Pool size is also important. Using our tool, we can do some back-of-the-envelope math to figure out the rough odds of surviving all season using the best available option. Based on my estimates, about 1% of the field is likely to last 17 weeks, and about half of those make it all 18 weeks. That means pools of 100 entrants or less are likely to wrap up before the end of the season, so the strategy is different based on pool size.
In this space, I’ll be giving out my favorite picks for large-field public contests like those found on DraftKings, as well as options for smaller pools like you might play in with friends or coworkers, since the strategy changes tremendously based on how long you’ll need to survive to win.
Week 6 Picks
It finally happened in Week 5: the first survivor bloodbath of the season. The two most popular teams, the Rams and Cardinals, both lost last week, taking out nearly half the field (47%) between them. With another 5% or so of entrants on the Bills, plus the usual smattering of other random teams, well over half the field was eliminated last week.
Unfortunately, that included both the entries I was using for this article. However, I still have one large-field entry alive. That has used (in order) Washington, Arizona, Seattle, Houston, and Indy. Since the FantasyLabs Survivor Tool allows me to check off those teams, I’ll be utilizing that feature and making the best choices going forward without using those teams.
All Contest Types: Green Bay Packers (If Available)
The Green Bay Packers are, by far, the safest choice in Week 6:
They also, surprisingly, don’t have a ton of future value. The only other week where they’re an especially strong option is Week 9 when they host the Panthers, but as it stands now, the Rams look like the better choice that week anyway.
There’s a lot to like about Green Bay this week. They’re coming off a bye and should be well rested while taking on a Bengals team that’s falling apart. Cincinnati just traded for Joe Flacco, and I don’t expect his six days with the team will be enough to revitalize their offense, plus he has to face a ferocious Packers pass rush led by Micah Parsons.
While Green Bay will be hugely popular, they’ve already been used by a reasonable number of entrants this season. Given how much the field has thinned — less than 30% of entrants in the DraftKings $100 survivor remain — I’m not all that worried about being contrarian anyway.
However, if you’re looking to pivot yourself, have already sued the Packers, or want to diversify across multiple surviving entrants, we’ve got another solid option.
Other Option: Los Angeles Rams
Pivoting to the Rams is a double-dip of uniqueness, since if all goes well you’ll then use the Packers in Week 9 with the bulk of the field on Los Angeles.
They’re in a similar position on paper as Green Bay, taking on an AFC North team that’s struggling with their star quarterback injured. While Lamar Jackson hasn’t been officially ruled out this week, it’s looking fairly unlikely that they rush him back before their Week 7 bye.
However, with Green Bay playing after the Rams this week, if Jackson is declared active, you could always pivot to the Packers on Sunday morning, provided your pool allows pick swapping after Thursday Night Football starts. In a pool that locks picks on Thursday night, I wouldn’t risk using the Rams, unless Jackson is definitively ruled out by then.
All in all, using the Rams instead of the Packers gives up about 10% of win equity this week and 2% in Week 9. We would need either the Packers to lose this week or the Rams in Week 9 to really see any benefit from that, though. The likeliest way that comes about would be an injury to Matthew Stafford or another key Rams piece, but that’s not enough for me to justify the pivot, unless I have multiple entries still in play.
Pictured: Jordan Love
Photo Credit: Imagn
