We had another fairly quiet week in survivor pools last week, with the three most popular teams advancing easily. Most pools shed about 10% of the field overall, although the Packers' tie game against the Cowboys took out another 5% or so in pools where ties count as a loss. That means through four weeks, roughly 60% of the field is alive in most pools.
That brings us to my NFL Week 5 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 5
Large Field: Los Angeles Rams
We're continuing to prioritize leverage and future value over current week safety in large field pools, since the high rate of survival so far means we're both likely to need to survive to the end, and likely to chop an eventual prize with other players.
That means we can generate more expected value by giving up some safety in exchange for a more contrarian pick. We'll win at a lower rate with that strategy, but when we do win, the prize will be bigger.
With all that said, the Rams are -340 favorites this week, which isn't much worse than the chalky Cardinals, and is slightly better than the Colts. Either of those teams losing would be a huge leg up if we survive with the Rams. They're in a good spot on a short week against a beat-up 49ers team that could be forced to go back to Mac Jones at quarterback.
We're giving up a bit of future value by rostering the Rams here, but most of that comes in Week 9 when they host the Panthers. There's a different team with even better odds that week, plus I worry about banking on the Rams later in the season.
QB Matthew Stafford is 37 years old with a chronic back injury and could be one big hit away from missing time. Without Stafford, the Rams would be much harder to trust.
Small Field: Detroit Lions
The Rams are a strong enough option this week that they're my top choice in all field sizes, as they offer a solid balance of safety, future value, and leverage. However, players who still have multiple entries alive would be wise to diversify, which is where the Lions come in.
Since the Lions are both safer and more popular, it makes sense to pivot to them in smaller field contests, where the odds of any player, much less multiple players, surviving all 18 weeks are lower.
Detroit has by far the best moneyline odds on the week at -525, as it takes on the Jake Browning-led Bengals. The Lions were somewhat popular last week, so you'll at least have some leverage over entries that already used them, and Pool Genius projects two other teams with at least 20% utilization rates this week.
The downside is that the Lions have some other late-season spots where it would be valuable to still have them available, including home games against the Giants and Cowboys. Those are fairly late in the season, though, and we're a bad week or two away from smaller contests not going that long anyway.
