Week 3 was another painful week in NFL survivor contests, with somewhere north of 25% of the field getting eliminated, primarily thanks to losses from the Seahawks (17%) and Packers (8%), but with some other lightly utilized teams also knocking out some of the field.
That means pools are down to roughly 20% of the original entrants as we head into Week 4, drastically raising the value of each remaining spot.
That brings us to our NFL Survivor Pool Week 4 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 when appropriate.
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 — Week 4
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| NFL Survivor Picks from PoolGenius |
| Season Discounts via Action Network |
Large Field: Minnesota Vikings
The logic from PoolGenius here is essentially to not worry about leverage and solve instead for some combination of safety and future value — and I'm inclined to agree.
Minnesota is a -600 or so moneyline favorite against a Dolphins team that lost their best player (Devon Achane) for the season last week — and was probably the worst team in football even prior to the injury. The Vikings are a somewhat surprising 3-0, plus they get to host Miami this week.
There are a couple of reasons why I'm not especially concerned about their utilization rate approaching 50%. The first is how far fields have been whittled down already — we don't need big contrarian hits to have a shot at a solo win.
More importantly, the Vikings have a relative lack of future value. Often, the value in being contrarian is that it lets you shape your future path, where you're also different from the field in one or more other weeks. There's not really a spot where you'd likely use Minnesota based on the current projected odds, so you aren't really getting on a different path.
Of course, the other reason to be different is to gain leverage in case of an upset. That's valid, but with the Vikings implied at around an 85% win probability, it's not likely enough to be worth the risk of a less-safe team, or burning one with more future value.
Small Field: Baltimore Ravens
The exception to everything I said above is smaller-field contests. Pools that started with 100 or so entrants should now be down to the 20s and are highly unlikely to run all 18 weeks.
Additionally, the chalky Vikings may have an even higher utilization rate in these contests, since a few people shifting has a bigger impact on the total percentage when the numbers are that small.
The Ravens are even more likely to win than the Vikings based on the market odds, which are currently beyond -700. That safety is crucial when the field narrows this much, since you probably only need to last a few more weeks. The downside is Baltimore is a great team, with at least 70% projected win odds in five more weeks this season.
Fortunately, the Ravens' three best future spots all come Week 14 or later, which is likely irrelevant in smaller pools. Based on a quick glance at the season planner tool, the earliest I'd even consider using Baltimore is Week 10, which probably doesn't matter.
With all that said, there's no guarantee Baltimore is the less popular of the two chalky options in any given pool. If your pool displays pick percentages before lock, it's probably worth just taking the less popular of the two. Even if they don't, it may be worth taking a quick look at your competitors' utilization rates so far to see what you can learn.
