NFL Survivor Pools seem incredibly easy. All you have to do is pick one team each week to win straight-up each week. The catch, of course, is that once you use a team, they’re done for the season. That makes it an exercise in long-term planning.
Most larger pools, such as those offered by major sportsbooks, will have at least a few entries make it to the final week. Three to six out of every 1,000 entries make it according to this piece from TeamRankings.com. That data was (mostly) from before the NFL added an 18th week,' but the point still stands in large fields.
That means we need to plan to last all 18 weeks throughout the season. To do so, it helps to plan ahead. Below, I’ll discuss my top options for Week 1, using projected win probability for the whole season from our Director of Predictive Analytics Sean Koerner.
These will update each week throughout the year, so every week we’ll have up-to-date information.