Survivor Week 2

NFL Survivor weekly picks and strategy

Probably the most popular football contest ever, Survivor only requires you to pick 1 game winner each week. The catch, you can’t use the same team twice. Here are some different strategies that I’m applying each week, and of course the teams I expect to win.

DraftKings Pools offers multiple NFL Survivor contests each season with entry fees ranging from $10 to $1,000. If I’m going to enter a $1,000 Survivor contest, it would be the Circa Survivor, which pays out $15 million to the winner. I haven’t had as much success with survivor as I have with pick ’em pools, so I stay to the $10 and $100 entries. This year, I have 40 entries in the $10 pool (winner gets $1.2 million) and 3 entries in $100 contest (winner gets $900 thousand). They are also running 2nd chance survivor pools (and last year they ran 3rd, 4th and 5th chance pools), which I bought 1 entry in the $100 contest ($50,000 to winner) and 16 entries in the $10 contest ($100,000 to winner). I’m using similar but different strategies for each.

Option Strategy

If you’ve played survivor before then you know the teams with the largest spreads get picked by the majority of the players. If one of those teams loses, lots of people get eliminated. This happens quite a bit in the first couple of weeks of a season. To avoid this, I like to deploy the “option” strategy at the start of the season. The “option” strategy means you use 2 entries to pick both teams in 1 game. Yes, you will be losing 1 entry, but you also survive with 1 entry and avoid the chaos of upsets. Added bonus, you get to pick games/teams that you normally wouldn’t play throughout the season, allowing the contestant to save the better teams for later in the year. This is the strategy deployed in the $10 contests.

In week 1 I split my 40 entries across 5 games, with 4 entries on each team. This allows me to save different teams in different contests, depending on which team emerges as this years surprise team. I have 20 entries remaining, and have them split between 2 games; Patriots at Dolphins and Rams at Titans. I also used the same 2 games to split the 16 entries in the 2nd chance contest.

The plan for the 40 entries is to split next week as well, going from 10 entries to 5 entries. I will then split 4 entries 2 and 2, then 1 and 1. I will make a separate pick for the 5th entry each week moving forward while running the option in weeks 4 and 5. Hopefully this gets me to week 6 with 2 entries, all chaos avoided and the chance to run another option play at anytime. For the 2nd chance pool, I’ll take the 16 entries to 8 then 4 then 2 then 1 and run that out again starting in week 6.

New Mexico Strategy

If you’ve read my pick ’em contest posts, then you’re familiar with the New Mexico model. New Mexico is a model I built to identify teams to cover the spread, and last season it predicted the spread outcome correctly 64% of the time. The model really likes favorites, so I figured I would use it in a survivor contest this year, and select the favorites it expects to cover the spread each week. After New Mexico identifies the teams it likes for the week, I limit results based on a few other key items. I prefer the team to be at home, and I try to avoid divisional games at all costs.

Based on those inputs I put 2 of the 3 entries on Denver in week 1. The Broncos won, so both entries are moving on to week 2. I went against my own ideology with the 3rd entry and put it on the Eagles to win the season opener against Dallas. I was a little worried with the way the Cowboys started, but it ended as expected, with the Eagles winning.

This week, the game that fits all 3 categories mentioned above is Pittsburgh, so I have the Steelers on 1 entry. On my 2nd entry I went with Dallas over NY Giants. This again breaks my rules, but the Giants are terrible and have the chance to start the season 0-8, so I might just fade them each week. On the 3rd entry I went with Arizona over Carolina. New Mexico was split on this game, but it meets the other 2 criteria of a home team against non-divisional opponent.

If I only had 1 entry, I’d follow the entire strategy to the fullest and make Pittsburgh my selection. However, I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket this early in the season, so I’m spreading the love around a bit until we get a clearer picture of who these teams really are (typically after week 4).