It's that time of year again when hope springs anew and the football-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 my NFL Week 4 survivor 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 Pool Genius 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 factors in survivor contests, as smaller fields generally don't have any entries 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. Additionally, they track pick selection data to help identify contrarian options. This is particularly helpful in larger NFL pools, as we're trying to optimize for expected value rather than just the 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 Picks — Week 4
Large Field: Houston Texans
Week 3 gave us our first significant upset for survivor pools, with the Packers' loss to the Browns eliminating approximately 15% of most pools.
Still, the rate of advancement through three weeks is around 70% total, higher than what we would typically expect.
All of which means the value of contrarian picks and saving strong teams for later is higher than usual. The former because we need big chunks of the field eliminated to narrow down how many people will share the prize; the latter because our odds of needing to last all season continue to increase.
This is where the Texans come in.
While they're not especially contrarian at 15%, they rank third overall in expected utilization in Week 3. They also have minimal future value. The next-best time to use them would be Week 11, when they have their rematch against the Titans, except that week they're in Tennessee and this time they're in Houston.
The Texans' offensive struggles make them hard to trust, but that's a big reason why more of the field isn't on them as -350 favorites. The Broncos fit a similar profile, but with more future value. However, I'm basing the large-field section on having used them in Week 1.
The Pool Genius tool tracks which teams are no longer available in each of your contests and automatically generates the best options, making things much easier to manage, especially when playing in multiple pools.
Small Field: New England Patriots
Pool Genius's tools back the Texans in both massive contests and small ones, but if you want to really take a shot on a contrarian choice, the Patriots are a solid option.
They have a bit more future value than the Texans, but not enough to be a deterrent.
At least based on current lines, the optimal path tool at Pool Genius doesn't project the Patriots as the best option at any point this season, so you aren't giving up too much by using them. They're also not quite as safe as the Texans, with -240 moneyline odds, but a home game against the Panthers doesn't seem too likely to produce an upset.
Where the Pats shine is with their extremely low utilization rate. In an ideal world, you roster the Patriots, but one of the more popular teams falls and takes out a big chunk of the field. Even if everyone holds serve, rostering less popular teams still has the benefit of allowing you to be unique in later weeks, though, so there's still some value.
Personally, I'm more interested in the Patriots in contests where I have multiple surviving entries. That way, I can go with a safer option with one pick, but take a bigger swing with New England.
