Ready to Master NFL Survivor Pools and Stay One Step Ahead of the Competition?

What Are NFL Survivor Pools: A Guide for How to Play

NFL Survivor Pools, also known as a knockout pool, are elimination-style sports betting contests where participants are required to select one NFL team to win each week, and aim to be the last one standing.

The catch? You can only use each team once throughout the season. If your chosen team wins, you advance to the next week. If they lose or tie, you’re eliminated from the pool. For instance, if a participant picked the New Orleans Saints to beat the Carolina Panthers in Week 1 on Sunday, the Saints would not be usable for the remaining 17 weeks of the year.

If the team you select loses, you are eliminated from the Survivor Pool contest. In Week 1 of the 2024 season, the Cincinnati Bengals were one of the most popular picks. After an upset loss to the New England Patriots, everyone who selected the Bengals was immediately eliminated from the season-long contest.

How to Win a Survivor Pool

If you're interested in our survivor picks for the upcoming week of the NFL season, click here.

The way to win an NFL survivor pool is to survive each week until there are no other entrants left standing.

Small survivor pools (under 100 entrants) typically end well before Week 18 of the NFL Season. However, large survivor pools (over 500 entrants) will frequently last through the final week of the NFL season.

If multiple teams all survive until the final week of the pool, then the prize pool is usually split amongst the surviving teams.

If multiple teams all survive until the final week of the pool, then the prize pool is usually split amongst the surviving teams.

How to Make Your NFL Survivor Picks Each Week

Making informed NFL survivor picks requires a combination of research, analysis, and strategy. Here are some key considerations to keep in mind:

The first step to choosing your NFL survivor pick for the week is to navigate the point spreads and see which teams are at least a touchdown favorite. If a team is favored by over a touchdown, their win probability will usually be around 65%, which are great odds that your pick will win that week.

The second step is to look for a team with a good offense. Even with a high win probability and a good offense though, the 2024 season has proven that no favorite is safe. Early in the 2024 season we saw several of the biggest favorites upset early in the year. However, generally these teams are the “safest picks.”

Another good tactic for picking your team each week is to pick on bad teams. In 2024, most survivor picks have come against bad teams like the Panthers, Raiders, Browns, Bears, and Giants. You can easily see which teams are bad NFL teams by looking at their point differentials. Teams that have given up a lot more points than they’ve scored are ripe for picking against.

If you can find the sweet spot of picking good offenses vs bad teams, then the matchup will frequently be heavily favored by at least a touchdown.

Survivor Pool Strategies

Survivor Pool Picks Team Analysis - Buffalo Bills

The Buffalo Bills were projected to win 10.5 games at the start of the 2024 season. The Buffalo offense and defense saw a ton of change in the offseason, but quarterback Josh Allen and head coach Sean McDermott remained in place. That said, Survivor Pool participants should've been confident that they would use Buffalo at some point in the 2024 season, but finding which week to do it is key.

Buffalo began the year with matchups against the Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins. In the preseason, those two were considered at least "good" teams, so avoiding the Bills in those spots made sense.

However, if you examined their matchups against the Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars over the next five weeks, you could see the Bills could be a strong play later in the year. Two matchups with the New England Patriots and one game against the New York Jets over the final three weeks of the year were also promising spots for the Bills.

Despite the team's Week 11 win over the Kansas City Chiefs, that was an easily avoidable matchup against the defending Super Bowl Champions. The Bills' Week 13, Week 14, and Week 15 matchups against the San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Rams, and Detroit Lions following their bye are also unfavorable spots. As you can see, pinpointing a good week to pick one of the most popular teams is key.

Utilizing Survivor Pool Grids To Find Future Value

Survivor Pool grids provide a color-coded overview of each team's full schedule with future game lines. These grids quickly show contestants who the biggest favorites are between the Thursday Night, Sunday, and Monday Night games for all slates.

Obviously, some teams quickly show that they are better than expected early in the year -- like the Minnesota Vikings, Washington Commanders, and Denver Broncos in 2024. That said, the survivor pool grid will change week-to-week after the preseason, and a team you were confident about for a given week could no longer be a good pick.