Week 8 Survivor Picks From the FantasyLabs Survivor Pool Tool

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 8 Picks

After the Week 5 bloodbath, most of the popular options in Week 6 took care of business, with only about 10% of the remaining field getting eliminated. The bulk of those were due to the Eagles, who suffered a blowout loss on Thursday Night Football against the Giants.

I’ll be continuing to base my picks on the one large-field entry still alive. That has used (in order) Washington, Arizona, Seattle, Houston, Indy, Green Bay, and Denver. 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.

Best Option if Available: Indianapolis Colts

The entry I’ve been basing this article on has already used the Colts, which makes them not an option this week. They’re the clear best option, with over 90% win odds against the Tennessee Titans, and a somewhat manageable usage rate since they were somewhat popular in a couple of other weeks.

They also don’t have a ton of future value, with their best projected win odds in any future week less than 70%. There’s not much reason to save them if you still have them available, as the other options this week are either somewhat risky, have much more future value, or both.

Other Option: Philadelphia Eagles

Trusting the Eagles is scary, as they haven’t made things look easy this season. They’re 5-2 but with just a +5 point differential on the season, which means they’ve been extremely lucky this season. They’re not the safest option of the teams we still have available, either, with the Chiefs having about 6% better odds of winning in Week 7.

However, at this point in the season, planning for the long run becomes increasingly important. Looking ahead, we’ll want to have the Chiefs available in Week 16 when they host the Titans, as that week is thin on heavy favorites and Kansas City will still have plenty to play for.

The best future opportunity for the Eagles is week 15 against the Raiders, but that week the 49ers host the Titans, making them the stronger option by then. The Eagles feel relatively safe against a Giants team that keeps finding ways to lose, and this is a chance to gain some equity over the field by virtue of keeping stronger teams around for later.

With that said, smaller field contests that are probably down to a couple dozen entrants could probably safely take the Chiefs, especially if Commanders starting QB Jayden Daniels misses this week. I’d also take the Chiefs in contests that require an extra Week 13 pick for the Thanksgiving/Black Friday games, as the Eagles’ home game against the Bears on the mini slate is one of the best options there.

Pictured: Jalen Hurts
Photo Credit: Imagn

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.

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.