Week 5 NFL Survivor 2025 Pool Picks

At this point in the year, we’re down to about half the entries in most of the pools I’m in. 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 5 Strategy

It was a simpler week, not counting the tie on Sunday night. The games were pretty straightforward, and we avoided upsets in our main plays here. How your picks shake out over the next few weeks will go a long way towards finding success when the dust settles. This is the time when taking some calculated risks can pay off. You don’t want to trade in too much EV for game theory purposes, but you have to be willing to stray from the most obvious picks if you want to win the pool in the end.

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 trio of Arizona, Detroit, and Indianapolis is likely going to make up two-thirds of the picks this weekend. Arizona gets a matchup against Tennessee at home, where the Cardinals are favored by 7.5 points. Detroit is playing a Cincinnati squad that can’t get out of its own way. Even with the game in Cincinnati, the Lions are favored by 10.5 points. Finally, the Colts play host to the Raiders as touchdown favorites.

This looks like the last week to use Arizona for quite a while. That fact is clearly bumping up their popularity. The Titans aren’t instilling much confidence at the moment, but I just have a hard time trusting the Cardinals as the biggest chalk option of the week. If you haven’t used Detroit yet, this is a good week to use them. They have a stretch of games in the next month where you might have some pause in selecting them. Indianapolis doesn’t have much future value either, so they’re intriguing hosting Las Vegas.

Off The Beaten Path

The Rams, Chiefs, and Bills are all somehow sitting at single-digit popularity. Some of that is because many entries have already picked them, but this seems backwards. I’m prioritizing putting them in pools this week at lower popularity and hoping for some carnage with the top trio.

Official Picks

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: Kansas City Chiefs at Jacksonville Jaguars (Used: PHI, BAL, SEA, BUF)
• Pool B: Buffalo Bills vs New England Patriots (Used: ARI, DAL, TB, HOU)
• Pool C: (Used: WAS, LAR, Eliminated: Atlanta Falcons)