NFL Week 8 Survivor Picks

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 8 Strategy

The board looks different from last week. We have three teams soaking up 70% of the popularity, per Pool Genius. The Colts, Falcons, and Bengals are large favorites and getting most of the buzz this week. With the current landscape and where most pools are at, we should be starting to think about game theory plays at this point in the season.

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 Colts are by far the biggest favorites on the slate. The moneyline is all the way down to -1300, and they’re expected to win by two touchdowns. Those facts, coupled with their upcoming schedule, make them pretty attractive if you haven’t already used them. They play the Steelers, Falcons, have a bye, and then the Chiefs over the next month. I can’t imagine many pools are going to still be alive heading into Week 13 when they’d be useful again. Atlanta is playing host to a Miami Dolphins team that looks utterly lost. They have some of the same factors going on as well, with a tough couple of weeks on the horizon. Cincinnati is my least favorite of the trio at the moment. Yes, the Jets are a mess. Yes, Woody Johnson is the worst owner in professional sports, as evidenced by his public criticism of his quarterback. But I don’t love choosing teams that we were so recently picking against in Survivor pools.

Off The Beaten Path

The Kansas City Chiefs are starting to become the Kansas City Chiefs again. There’s a pretty good chance that many entrants have already used the Chiefs. Whether they’re still in or not is another story. The fine folks at Pool Genius have the Chiefs projected at 6% popularity. If one or two of the chalky options blow up this week, the Chiefs could be the answer to being one of the sole survivors.

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:

• Indianapolis Colts

• Atlanta Falcons

• Kansas City Chiefs

I’m going to give three picks and track how the season goes for each as if it were its 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)