NFL Survivor Strategy: Two Picks To Avoid In Week 2

Welcome to our weekly post on NFL survivor pools, where we recap the previous week and list a few teams you should definitely avoid this week if your goal is to win your pool.

Week 1 Recap

For a while it looked like chaos would rule in Week 1. The most popular pick, the Eagles at 44%, were down 17-0 at halftime to the lowly Jaguars before ultimately winning. And the second most popular pick, the Bears at 19%, did lose to the Bills in overtime. So including some of the other upsets, over 70% of survivor players were nearly eliminated in Week 1!

The actual value ended up being only 28%, but that’s still a very good week…provided you didn’t pick one of those losing teams, of course.

Weeks like Week 1 serve as great examples of why mathematically optimal survivor strategy, which drives our recommended picks, often advocates avoiding the most popular teams — even if they have higher win odds (Philadelphia) and/or less future value (both Philly and Chicago) than the team you choose.

If you survived Week 1, your surviving entries just had their expected share of the prize pool go up by almost 40%, assuming an equal split among all surviving entries. If the Eagles had lost as well, the expected share for your surviving entries would have more than tripled.

Week 1 Pick Review

Our top Survivor pick in all pool sizes last week, both in our full Week 1 writeup on Wednesday and in the final Week 1 report card on Sunday, was Detroit. The Lions put a beating on the Giants on Monday night, winning by three touchdowns. The “betting market” pick from last week’s write up was the Jets, who scraped by the Raiders by five points.

Our Wednesday advice for playing multiple entries advocated dividing picks among the Lions and Jets, then adding in Philadelphia, then finally some Chicago (but only if you were playing at least 8 entries in a pool). So the vast majority of players following our advice would have kept all their entries intact.

Philadelphia losing would have been a net positive, but if the Eagles turn out to be better than expected this year, we’ve at least still got them in our pocket.

Week 2 Survivor Picks To Avoid

Our complete Week 2 survivor picks and analysis can be found in our NFL survivor pool picks section. However, we’re going to use this blog post to highlight teams you might be considering using this week, that our numbers say are inferior picks — if you want have the best chance to win your survivor pool in 2014, that is.

This week we’ve got two teams branded with the yellow warning sign. Just remember that this analysis is based on Wednesday afternoon data, and things can always shift during the week. The latest data we have will always be reflected on this week’s survivor report card.

New Orleans Saints (@ Cleveland Browns)

  • TR Elimination Risk: 34% (#7)
  • Vegas Money Line: -270 (#4)
  • Popularity: 16% (#3)
  • Future Value: 0.5 (#14 in small pools)

The Saints are the third most popular team at 16%, but our models have them as only the 7th safest pick. Combine that with their moderate future value (a few games coming up should be as easy as or easier than this week), and New Orleans is pretty clearly a team to stay away from in Week 2, based on our numbers.

The betting markets have the Saints rated a bit safer than we do, but even then, going by Vegas win odds would only shift them up into the “worth a look” tier of teams this week — still not a top option.

Green Bay Packers (vs. New York Jets)

  • TR Elimination Risk: 29% (#3 tie)
  • Vegas Money Line: -395 (#2)
  • Popularity: 30% (#1)
  • Future Value: 0.6 (#12 in small pools)

Green Bay is one of the safest picks of the week, although our models are more pessimistic about their chances against the Jets than the betting markets are. Having some, but not a ton of future value, the Pack start out looking like a pretty nice survivor pick, but their 30% popularity quickly whacks them well off the top tier of options for Week 2.

As of Wednesday no less than five other teams offered a better overall combination of (relatively) low elimination risk, high current week value, and low future value than Green Bay does this week. The Packers are worth some consideration as part of a large portfolio of picks if you’re playing many entries in a pool, but if you’ve got just one or two entries? No way.

Again, you can see all the teams we’re avoiding this week on our survivor report card page. Good luck this week in your survivor pools!

Glossary Of Terms

  • TR Elimination Risk: The chance that a team loses this week, based on our predictive models. So a lower percentage is better.
  • Vegas Money Line: Essentially, how likely the betting markets think a team is to win. The bigger the negative number, the safer a team is (e.g. -300 is better than -200). You can compare the TR Elimination Risk ranking (in parentheses) with the Vegas Money Line ranking (ditto) to get a rough sense of how risky our models think a team is, compared to Vegas expectations.
  • Popularity: Our projection of the percentage of people across all Survivor pools in the universe (with traditional, use-each-team-once rules) that will pick the team in question this week. A lower percentage is better, since avoiding popular picks almost always increases your expected value.
  • Future Value: A numerical rating we created to assess the value of saving a team for later. Lower is better, since all else being equal, you always want to save better teams for the future. It’s important to note that a team’s Future Value can depend on the size of your pool. For example, you’ll probably need to survive the entire 17-week season to win a 2,000 person pool. A person in a very small pool that ends by Week 11, however, won’t care that Baltimore has an easy game against Jacksonville in Week 15.