NFL Week 7 Survivor Picks

Week 6 turned out to be relatively chalky. The only big landmine to avoid was the Eagles on Thursday Night Football. A divisional matchup on the road on a Thursday night is something I’ll gladly avoid. If you’re still alive in your pools, you’re in luck! We have a great partner to help us navigate the rest of the season. Using the tools we have available to us from our friends over at PoolGenius, we can look at this week with an eye towards the future to set ourselves up for success.

Week 7 Strategy

The board looks much different this week. There's only one game with more than a touchdown spread and three of the top five most popular teams are on the road, in a divisional matchup, or some combination of those factors.

To be successful at survivor, you need to think about the following and adjust accordingly:

• Pool characteristics (size, rules, etc)

• Current remaining entries

• Personal risk tolerance

• Game theory (thinking of opponent choices and behavior)

The Chalk

The biggest favorite is Kansas City as they play host to the Las Vegas Raiders. As 12-point favorites, they are by far the highest projected pick this week. It looks like this is the week to use them, as they have some tough matchups over the next few weeks. With the majority of pool entrants knocked out, it might be worth avoiding this game strictly from a game-theory perspective. The next two most popular teams are New England at Tenessee and Chicago hosting New Orleans. I’d rather the home team out of those two games. The ability to pick on the Saints is a solid bonus, as well.

Off The Beaten Path

If you’re unimpressed by the most popular picks this week and really want to go off the beaten path, the next two most popular picks are Pittsburgh at Cincinnati and Denver hosting the New York Giants. Pittsburgh has the unfortunate trio of playing on the road on Thursday night against a divisional opponent. Denver also looked wholly unimpressive as they barely squeaked by the other New York team last weekend.

Official Picks

Even though our hypothetical pools are all eliminated, we’ll still get some “official” picks in there this week. Assuming you have all of them available, I’d rank them in the following order:

• Chicago Bears

• Kansas City Chiefs

• New England Patriots

I’m going to give three picks and track how the season goes for each as if it were it’s own pool. Pool A is our conservative pool. Pool B is straying a little bit from the most popular options but not going too far. Pool C will only be our “Off The Beaten Path” picks. Since that pool was eliminated, we’ll leave that marked off but I’ll still give some alternative options in that section of the article.

• Pool A: (Used: PHI, BAL, SEA, BUF, Eliminated: KC)
• Pool B: (Used: ARI, DAL, TB, HOU, Eliminated: BUF)
• Pool C: (Used: WAS, LAR, Eliminated: Atlanta Falcons)