It's that time of year when hope springs anew and the NFL-loving public collectively says, "This year, I'll go all the way." I'm of course referring to NFL survivor pools, a type of contest that sounds easy — until you're doing it.
That brings us to our NFL Survivor Pool Week 2 picks.
The concept is simple: Pick one team that wins an NFL game every week. No spreads or totals, just winners.
Once you use that team, they're done — creating an element of strategy and long-term planning that makes these contests deceptively difficult.
Fortunately, we've continued our partnership with our friends at PoolGenius to make things easier. They've built slate-leading tools to help conquer a variety of pool contests, including survivor.
My favorite feature of the site is the ability to customize for your individual pool type. Factors like contest size and payout structure are huge in survivor contests, as smaller fields generally don't have any entries that make it all 18 weeks.
To give a glimpse of how that works, throughout the season, I'll be providing their top option for small (less than 100) and large (1,000+) entry pools. I'm also including an alternate/contrarian option for those of us playing multiple entries in a single pool, as a means of diversifying.
Besides that, they track 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 odds of winning.
Finally, they use 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 their full data, you'll need to sign up for the site. It's well worth it, though, and it also includes tools for taking down the increasingly popular pick'em contests that feature massive prize pools.
NFL Survivor Pool Picks
| Get Survivor Picks Now |
|---|
| NFL Survivor Picks from PoolGenius |
| Season Discounts via Action Network |
Small Field: Tampa Bay Bucs
My personal favorite pick this week is the Buccaneers, who are projecting as the second-most utilized team and have the third-best moneyline odds on the slate. "Second-most utilized" is a bit misleading as PoolGenius has the top two teams basically even, but Tampa just slightly below.
The reason I prefer the Bucs at -400 or so odds to teams more likely to win is their lack of future value. At no other point this season is Tampa Bay projected to even be a -200 favorite — though that can obviously change — so it is close to a "now-or-never" team.
Obviously with pools larger than 100 or so entrants we expect to need to last all 18 weeks, so using the Bucs now preserves stronger teams for late in the season when we're likely to need them.
Assuming they win, you'd feel pretty good with an entry that started with the Bucs and Raiders, for example, competing against entries that have already burned stronger teams.
Small Field: San Francisco 49ers
Currently, PoolGenius is projecting the 49ers to be the most popular team on the slate, but with a relatively even split between San Francisco and Tampa Bay.
We had a similar dynamic last week with the Jaguars and the Chargers, where Los Angeles was the "chalk" play in theory. That turned out to not be the case in sharper pools, where a decent chunk of the field pivoted to the Jaguars in order to avoid the chalk — but that made the Jaguars more popular in some contests.
I wouldn't be shocked if we had a similar scenario here with the field leveling itself off on the 49ers, despite their massive -900 or so moneyline as they host the Dolphins.
That level of safety is worth sacrificing some future value for, especially in pools we don't expect to make it all 18 weeks. One of the better future spots for the 49ers is a Week 18 matchup with the Cardinals, which obviously isn't relevant if your pool wraps up in Week 17 or earlier.
I'm a bit nervous about the 49ers given the travel back from Australia, but they have four extra days of rest and looked great in that game against the Rams.
Plus, the betting market seems to have no such concern, so I'll trust the odds in some of my contests.
Contrarian Option: Chicago Bears
I will be diversifying a bit with the Bears, who are projecting for virtually no utilization by the field (about 2%). They have a somewhat challenging divisional matchup against the Vikings this week, but this is their home game against Minnesota, and Chicago is about 70% implied to win.
Chicago has some other decent spots later in the season, but I've played with PoolGenius's season planner a bit this week and don't really find myself missing the Bears much when I burn them this week, and they're a massive leverage option.
Not only would you gain a ton of equity if San Francisco or Tampa Bay were to be upset, but you'd be able to be contrarian again in later weeks by keeping those teams available. The 49ers, in particular, have some other solid spots, and over the course of the season more could emerge for Tampa Bay as well.
As always, this isn't a pick I'd make if playing just one entry this year, but if you're playing multiple pools it makes a lot of sense to diversify and give yourself a potential hedge in case of a big upset to one of the top teams.
