NFL survivor pools are very hard to win. You typically have to outlast many opponents, and luck often determines who survives a close call and who gets eliminated. Even the smartest possible pick process can end up in a Week 1 exit.
In the long run, though, sharp players stand to make handsome returns by mastering the principles of survivor pool strategy. (We explain these principles in our 2020 survivor pool strategy primer.)
Once you understand the strategy, winning a specific pool typically boils down to opportunity recognition — your ability to identify the best chances to increase your odds, in whichever week these moments happen to present themselves.
In this post, we review three specific NFL survivor picks that helped savvy players win pools last year, along with the rationale for making them. Learning from these examples, you’ll be ready to exploit similar opportunities in your 2020 survivor pool.
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Week 10: Two Popular Survivor Picks Lose
You never know which week will end up having the biggest impact on your odds to win a survivor pool. But at some point, three things need to happen for you to take home that big trophy:
- You must pick a team that wins.
- All of your opponents have to pick other teams.
- All of their picks have to lose.
So at some point, you have to stop following the crowd. The key is knowing when it actually makes sense to zig while most of your opponents zag.
The Setup
Week 10 provided a contrarian opportunity that paid off big for sharp survivor players last season. Both the Saints (at home against the 1-7 Falcons) and the Colts (at home against the 1-7 Dolphins) were extremely popular picks that week. In fact, over 80% of still-alive survivor entries nationwide selected one of those two teams.
Our algorithmic survivor analysis immediately flagged Week 10 as a relatively unique opportunity. Most NFL seasons feature plenty of weeks with one really popular survivor pick. It’s unusual, though, to have a week in which two different teams each draw over 34% of the public’s picks. In fact, it had happened only one other time in the previous decade.
With both the Saints and Colts having just above 80% odds to win, there was nearly a 1-in-3 chance that at least one of them would lose. In addition, there was around a 3% chance that both of them would lose, wiping out over 80% of still-alive survivor entries.
A 3% chance is highly unlikely, but the impact if it happened would be game-changing.
The Pick
Our pick recommendations took advantage of this situation. Point spreads had both the Saints (-13.5) and Colts (-11) as double-digit favorites, but the math made it clear that from an expected value standpoint, sacrificing some safety to exploit such a historic opportunity to fade the public absolutely made sense.
Meanwhile, the Bears were being almost completely ignored as a Week 10 survivor pick, with only 1.8% pick popularity facing Detroit. That was the first week that QB Matthew Stafford missed with a back injury for the Lions, and betting odds moved sharply in Chicago’s favor Sunday morning.
In the end, Chicago (-6.5) became our most frequent survivor pick recommendation to subscribers, along with Tampa Bay (-5), Kansas City (-5.5), and Baltimore (-10.5). Only about 19% of our recommended picks to subscribers were the Saints or Colts, compared to 80%+ of the public.
(For context, a big part of the edge we deliver comes from customizing picks based on the specific rules and other characteristics of individual survivor pools, so our weekly pick recommendations can vary from pool to pool. Many of our subscribers also play multiple entries in their pools, in which case we often recommend a mix of teams to pick each week, like “3 Bears, 2 Ravens, 1 Saints.”)
The Outcome
As fate would have it, the Colts and Saints both lost in upsets, while the Bears, Bucs, and Ravens all won. Kansas City lost in excruciating fashion by blowing a late lead.
Even with some losses, though, three of our four most frequent pick recommendations survived a week of absolute carnage in survivor pools. Our still-alive subscribers survived Week 10 at a 61% rate, compared to only a 12% survival rate for the public at large.
Did we expect both Indianapolis and New Orleans to lose? No. As mentioned above, the chance of that happening was roughly 1-in-35. However, from a risk vs. reward perspective, even a small likelihood of such a transformative outcome helped to justify the added risk of avoiding those two teams. No team is a lock in today’s NFL.
After Week 10, just over 10% of our subscriber base’s survivor entries were still alive, compared to only 2% of the general public. In addition, many of our subscribers scored pool wins in small to mid-sized pools in Week 10 as a result of exploiting this opportunity.
Week 13: Patience With A Kansas City Pick Pays Off
In our survivor strategy article, we touch on the concept of future value, or quantifying the benefit of saving a team to use as a survivor pick in a future week. Most survivor pools are expected to last deep into the season before a winner is crowned, so simply trying to maximize your odds to survive the early weeks is usually a poor strategy.
Survivor players that follow the crowd and use lots of popular (and good) teams early on are often forced to make risky (yet still popular) picks later in the season. That’s an unpalatable situation that sharp players seek to avoid.
The Setup
Last season, one team with high future value was Kansas City. In particular, Week 13 (hosting the Raiders) looked like a great spot to have the Chiefs available. Of course, the Chiefs were a strong team and viable survivor pool pick multiple times before Week 13.
By the time Week 13 rolled around, Kansas City was indeed the slate’s largest favorite (-11), just ahead of Carolina (-10.5 vs. Washington) and Philadelphia (-10.5 at Miami). However, many survivor entries had not resisted temptation earlier in the season and already had burned the Chiefs.
The result? An estimated 47% of the public picked Carolina, compared to only 17% taking Kansas City. So the most likely team to win in Week 13 was far less popular of a pick than the next safest choice. Picking Kansas City provided a very high expected value.
The Pick
Our recommendations were almost perfectly reversed from the public since we had advised the majority of our subscribers to save Kansas City for likely use later in the season.
We recommended our subscribers use Kansas City on 59% of available entries (about 3.5 times the public picking rate for KC), while the public went with Carolina nearly half of the time.
The Outcome
The floundering Panthers, who ultimately never won another game after Week 9, lost 29-21 to Washington. Kansas City, meanwhile, rolled to an easy 40-9 win over the Raiders.
In total and across all teams, over 60% of all remaining public entries were eliminated in Week 13. After the dust settled, the percentage of our subscribers still alive in NFL survivor pools after Week 13 was nearly seven times higher than the public survival rate.
And just as in Week 10, this outcome led to pool wins for our subscribers — this time including some mid-sized and larger pools as well.
Taking calculated risks based on future value (e.g. to save the Chiefs and set up a future situation like this one) doesn’t always pan out in the best way. Sometimes nearly all of your opponents survive the week anyway, and your savvy gambit yields minimal positive impact.
However, when these risks do pan out, they can make the difference between winning and losing.
Week 6: Exploiting The One Chance To Pick A Bad Team
Based on historical average survival rates, you’re probably going to need to last the entire 17-week NFL season in order to win a decent-sized NFL survivor pool. (A pool of 175-200 entries or bigger would qualify for that expectation.)
Unfortunately, you cannot survive an entire season by only picking great teams. At some point, you have to make some riskier picks and hope they go your way.
The sooner you recognize that making some risky picks in survivor pools is a matter of “when” and not “if,” the sooner you will become a much more lethal player. You also need to recognize that the best opportunities to differentiate your picks from the crowd and boost your pool win odds often come early in a season.
However, you will need to have the guts to sign up for a nerve-wracking bargain: a higher chance of getting eliminated early, in exchange for a better chance to eventually win the pool.
The Setup
In Week 6 last year, as crazy as it sounds, 0-5 Washington — a team that had scored 10 points combined in its previous two games — offered one of these bargains when visiting also-winless Miami.
Baltimore and New England were the two biggest favorites, with the Patriots favored by 17 points against the Giants and the Ravens 10.5-point favorites against Cincinnati. The public had already used both teams fairly heavily. In the end, about 24% of the public picked New England and 34% chose Baltimore.
Entries that could not use Baltimore or New England (or preferred to save them for a future week) appeared to settle on Dallas, a 7-point favorite at the Jets, as their preferred choice. The Cowboys had 14% pick popularity.
The Pick
We recommended Baltimore and New England at a similar rate to the public, but we disagreed on Dallas. Instead, we recommended Washington as the pick for 26% of our subscribers’ entries, and Dallas for only 4%. This pick, as you may imagine, was controversial.
Washington’s advantage as a survivor pick was two-fold relative to Dallas. First, as a decent team, Dallas had some future value, while Washington’s future value was non-existent. Week 6 was probably going to be the only week in the entire season to even begin to consider Washington as a survivor pick.
Second, getting a win by picking an 0-5 Washington team, projected to finish with among the fewest wins in the NFL, would be a great result in pools that used the combined win total of all picks you make as a tiebreaker. Those pools aren’t super common, but a portion of our subscribers do play in them.
And of course, let’s not forget that Washington was playing an 0-4 Miami team that had been outscored by 137 points to start the season. Winless Washington was favored by six points, with only about 5% lower odds to win than 3-2 Dallas. Despite the frightening optics scaring away the public, here was a rare chance to pick a throwaway team for only a small amount of additional elimination risk.
The Outcome
With a good dose of luck, Washington prevailed against Miami with a 17-16 win. Meanwhile, Dallas got upset by the Jets after falling behind 21-6 at halftime.
For this pick, it’s tougher to tease out the exact benefit delivered. But after the season ended, our subscribers in the types of pools in which we recommended Washington reported the best performance of any pool types we support. (On average, our subscribers won 3.7 times the prize money in survivor pools than one would expect last year.)
It’s psychologically difficult to pick a bad team in a survivor pool, especially early in the season, and this result clearly involved some good fortune. But the logic that goes into making such a contrarian pick in the first place enables sharp survivor players to thrive in the long term.
Look For Similar Survivor Pick Situations In 2020
When will the best opportunities to fade the public and set up huge potential gains in your NFL survivor pool arise in 2020? It’s hard to predict at the beginning of the season, although from the very start our analysis will have its eyes on some promising looking weeks.
As long as you take the time to understand each team’s objective win odds, collect reliable pick popularity data, and put together an effective formula for estimating each team’s future value, you’ll have the foundation in place to better identify the survivor pick opportunities you can’t afford to pass up.
If you’d prefer to outsource all the research and math to the survivor pool pros, check out our NFL Survivor Picks product and other tools at the links below. We’re offering free access through NFL Week 1 to all FantasyPros readers, no credit card required.
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