After a messy Week 5, things went more according to plan in Week 6. Only about 10% of the field saw their survivor dreams crushed, most of them via the Eagles' loss on Thursday Night Football. Still, we're down to roughly a quarter of the field remaining in most contests, so things are heating up.
This week, we have an extremely safe (but chalky) pick, and another more interesting option that many entrants won't have available.
Let's get into the NFL Week 7 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 industry-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 7
Best Option if Available: Denver Broncos
A large portion of the remaining field won't have the Broncos available this week, since about 35% used them back in Week 1 (when the field was much larger), and another 11% did so in Week 4. That means considerably less than half of the surviving players will have Denver as an option this week, leading to them being projected for just a 7% pick rate.
That's despite Denver having a roughly -350 moneyline for their home game against the Giants, and relatively limited value in later weeks. The only other spot you'd strongly consider them would be Week 10 against the Raiders, but there are other teams with similarly strong odds that week. Sacrificing a bit of hypothetical Week 10 win percentage is well worth it anyway, as plenty could change between now and then, and stronger options could emerge.
More importantly, we'll get a double dose of leverage by using the Broncos now. Not only will we move past the huge chunk of the field that used the Chiefs or Patriots if they lose, but we'll be able to use those teams in future weeks when our opposition can't. While the former scenario isn't all that likely, keeping the Chiefs in your pocket for later could be hugely valuable down the stretch.
Best Option If Denver Unavailable: Kansas City Chiefs
With their moneyline odds going past -700, the Chiefs are about as safe an option as there ever will be in any NFL survivor. However, the field is well aware of that, and they are projected to approach 50% utilization this week. Still, if I don't have the Broncos as an option, I'm willing to bite the bullet and roll with Kansas City.
This is their best projected win probability of the season, with only Week 16 coming close, and that's far enough away that key injuries could easily disrupt those plans.
Since the field has already been whittled down so thoroughly, I'm also not quite as worried about being contrarian as I was before the bad weeks hit. It's highly likely that smaller contests wrap up with a solo winner before Week 18, and larger contests get down to a fairly limited number of survivors before it's all said and done. If you’ve still got the Chiefs as an option, focus on simply advancing to next week, and let everyone else take themselves out this time.
