NFL Survivor 2025 Week 8
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 and 3rd chance survivor pools that I will enter and follow similar strategies as outlined below.
Option Strategy
The option strategy requires a user to make a contest entry on both sides of a game. This will ensure that 1 entry moves on to the next week. However, it also means 1 entry will be eliminated. It is a good strategy to use early in the season. It allows you to get a better understanding of each team, avoid the early upsets and save good teams for later in the season.
I’ve decided not to run the option strategy for the next few weeks. Hopefully I’m able to take 2 of the top teams identified by the New Mexico model to keep all options open moving forward. This will allow me to use the option strategy one more time later if caught in a tough week.
New Mexico Strategy
The New Mexico strategy is a selection of teams using the New Mexico pick ’em model. I use this model for against the spread predictions, and this season I’m running it in the Circa Millions and Westgate SuperContest. I will start with the teams it likes to win big, and then consider if they are home/away or playing a divisional opponent.
The Chiefs and Seahawks took care of business for me last week, and all of my entries moved on from week 7 to week 8. There are lots of choices for picks this week with so many big lines. If you didn’t use the Chiefs last week as a 14 point favorite, you can get them this week against Washington as a 12.5 point favorite. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have the Chiefs available on any of my tickets, so I’m looking elsewhere.
The Colts are another huge favorite, with a line of 15.5 over the Titans. That is another huge line for a divisional game, but the Colts should be able to pull it out. However, I’ve already used the Colts on my tickets, so I’m forced to go in another direction.
What direction am I going? How about the Patriots at home against the Browns. New England has looked like a completely different team this year under head coach Vrabel. The defense shouldn’t have any problem slowing down the Browns rush attack, and the Browns have not played very well on the road this year.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t expecting this from the Patriots this year, and used them as an option play a few times in some of the contests I’ve entered. So I was forced to go in another direction once again. For these remaining cards, I used the Los Angeles Chargers on TNF against the Vikings. The Chargers took care of business, so I got the dub and am moving on with these entries already.
What teams are you taking this week and why? Let me know in the comments.
