Survivor Football Island: Outwit, Outpick, Outlast
Welcome to a weekly feature with me and my friend Shane Heckman teaming up to share thoughts on NFL Survivor Pools.
For those unfamiliar with these pools, and it’s totally fine if you are as we welcome people of all levels to engage with us and learn, the objective is to pick one team to win each week without using the same team twice. Win and you continue on. Lose and you’re done. You balance the long game of potentially trying to plan ahead and save good teams with the short-game of needing to, well, survive on a weekly basis.
To briefly explain how and why this is a thing, Shane and I met a little over five years ago watching the 2012 Flyers-Pens playoff series at our friend Ryan’s Penn State apartment. (Back when the Flyers and Pens were largely on equal footing).
We would talk on Twitter a lot about fantasy sports, and about a week ago, Shane reached out pitching the idea of something like this to me.
After jamming a bit on the best way to approach, we landed on a post every Thursday morning that attempts to provide — hopefully informative — advice on how to navigate Survivor Pools both short and long-term throughout the season.
We’ll both bring our unique and potentially contrasting thoughts to the table on which team to pick each week. We don’t guarantee to be correct, but both of us do have some track records of success to speak of.
If you have ideas on how to improve the structure at all, we’re open to any and all feedback.
Let’s hit it with both of our thoughts below:
- **Any references to point spreads, injuries, etc, are based on a Thursday morning posting time of approximately 8 a.m. and are subject to change as the week continues on.**
SHANE
It’s Me, The One Percent
If 99% of football fanatics come for the Fantasy Football side of things, consider me the 1%. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with an epic fantasy league — and I’m in my fair share of them — but football Survivor Pools will always have my heart. I’ve been doing these pools since I was in elementary school, when game spreads were found in newspapers and picks were called in on a landline phone. I’ve done my fair share of picking and while I won’t pretend to be an expert, I will gladly report a decent amount of Survivor Pool success.
Usually, I’ll put two entries in the same pool each year (I’ve toyed around with more entries or multiple leagues, but two picks one pool seems to be my thing). I’ve been in my current mega-pool since 2009 (around 1300 annual entries), and in that time I’ve had three entries make it past Week 14. Two of those entries have occurred in the last three years, both making it to week 16. I’d like to believe that I’m on to something, that my weekly superstitious strategy is rock-solid, but for now only time will tell. So how superstitious do things get?
It’s important to understand that in a Survivor Pool, you’re playing against everyone else. There are times where you can take heavy favorites, and there are probably times to take some riskier picks. At the end of the day, taking the heavy favorite every week will not only add pressure in later weeks but also will make it an all or nothing gig for you: if you’re picking the heavy favorites along with everyone else, either everyone is winning…or no one is. I mix it up because it’s so much fun to root for the big underdog of the week when you know half of your pool is in on them. With that said, the name of the game for me? Eliminating the variables.
My Strategy: Eliminating the Variables
Spreads are a great place to start, and I’ll usually peep the early lines on a Tuesday morning to gather a few teams in mind. It’s easy to look at spreads and make a pick from there, but to me it’s not enough; a spread is only one variable. Spreads don’t factor a potential trap game or divisional affair. They don’t always signify what a team might be playing for or the momentum they’re carrying. And they also don’t fully consider players who might be game-time decisions. So yes, spreads are a great starting point, and they help to essentially rule out most/all of the underdogs. But there are other variables to mind.
I’ll never choose the away team, unless I’m in a bind. Full believer in the home field advantage. Game going to be unpredictable because of weather? Probably avoiding that game, too. I don’t like Thursday night games for the altered team practice schedules, nor do I like games in other countries. I don’t have a problem picking a Monday Night team, though.
At this point, I’ll consider home teams and spreads to narrow it down to 2 or 3 teams. In the early goings, there might be more as you have 32 teams to pick from. In weeks 1 and 2, you can always go super risky right off the bat, but I’ll usually take a widespread favorite. I’d much rather lose a good team early on than take a chance and go down with the survival pool ship before it even sets sail. But generally speaking, once I have 2–3 teams picked I’ll scrutinize some more. Is there anything that separates one above the rest? Is there a week in the future I could use one of these teams? What’s my gut saying? If I pray to the football gods hard enough will it help?
I’ll be the first to admit that I go against the grain and use my gut feelings and emotions in making a pick, which is by far the biggest no-no in gambling. Yet for me, that plan has worked. At the end of the day, you stick to your own strategy; you select a team and don’t look back. You cross your fingers and pay the extra $60 to get NFL Redzone so you can see those upsets happen, knowing that each upset brings you closer to being the ultimate survivor. The best part is that you don’t even have to go all the way, you just have to be the last picker standing. With a little bit of your own strategy and a whole lot of luck, who’s to say that can’t be you?
Week 1 Picks:
Early spreads of at least 5 points: Patriots, Bills, Falcons, Texans, Steelers, and Panthers. Of those 6, the Steelers have a respectable spread at -8.5. I could see them easily covering, but with DeShone Kizer debuting in a divisional tilt I’m going to stay away. Not to mention, the last time these two met it took the Steelers OT to win. The Falcons and Panthers are also away, and this leaves the Pats, Bills, and Texans as teams I’m considering:
The Patriots are home against Kansas City. Tough first game, even if they’re favored by 9 points. I fully expect Brady to replace Julian Edelman with yet another #nextmanup, but anything can happen on opening night and Thursday Night Football. Not the worst pick in the world, especially for a Thursday night. But not my pick this week.
The Bills are home against the Jets, favored by 9.5. They might finish around .500, but the Jets will be worse. It’s the debut for Sean McDermott, but that doesn’t concern me. What does is picking one mediocre team over another in Week 1
The Texans are home versus Jacksonville. Blake Bortles has looked like Blake Bortles this preseason, though I have no idea what to expect from Houston following Hurricane Harvey. Prayers out to the city of Houston, and it’s hard to imagine that with everything occurring in the last week that this won’t be an emotional variable of some sort. The question is, how much?
Making this weekly pick on Thursday is a lot tougher than making this pick Sunday morning. A lot can crop up in 3 days time, as spreads change constantly and there’s not nearly as much expert forecasting to aid in a selection. Bearing that caveat in mind, the first few weeks always seem to be the toughest in survivor pools as you find out which teams are contenders, which are pretenders, and which are in between. I think that ultimately, the devastation in Houston provides the Texans a positive spark more than anything else. It’s a chance for the city to heal and unite behind their team, if only for a few hours. Survive and advance…give me the Texans.
Drew
There’s Something Special About Survivor
I won’t go as far as Shane in terms of vaulting Survivor Pools above Fantasy Football leagues. That’s a bold statement, but at the same time, I understand it.
Let me phrase it like this:
If I could only play in one of the two formats, I would pick my fantasy leagues all the way, but there’s something invigorating about being alive in a Survivor Pool. After all of the preparation, chronic over-thinking, and official pick submission, only two numbers matter:
The team you picked to win’s score vs. their opponent’s score.
No other stats or individual player tracking is required. If you’re somewhat competent and hard-working, your fantasy season will most likely run through Thanksgiving at minimum, but that’s far from a guarantee with Survivor Pools, and that’s part of what makes it special.
Fantasy Football will always be my first love, but if it was possible to barter with the football Gods, I would definitely take a few losses early on in some of my leagues if it meant I could live to see another week in Survivor.
My biggest claim to fame here is winning back-to-back pools in 2009 and 2010, making it all the way through the season the first year and up through Week 16 in the latter.
It’s rare for pools to go that long though, but regardless of length, I’m looking to rekindle that success with a couple foundational pillars combined with logic.
Never Pick a Road Team
There might be some exceptions if desperate times called for desperate measures in say Week 16 or 17, but otherwise, this has become a hard and fast rule for me.
Especially early on in the season, there’s no need to take an unnecessary risk of this nature, and this is an easy way to reduce and zero in on some of your choices right off the bat.
Not to cherry pick past games, but I think back to last November where the league best Patriots needed to mount a fourth quarter comeback on the road to beat a struggling Jets team.
Not a foolproof example of course, but it leads me to one of my other guiding principles of being mindful about divisional matchups. Things get weird here even when two teams appear far from evenly matched on paper.
I usually think of some recent Rams teams as examples here. Between 2012 and 2015, they never won more than seven games in a season but twice finished with an NFC West record of 4–2 or better.
Between the hard road team filter and more flexible but still important divisional filter, that eliminates a lot of risky options as the picture comes more info focus.
Week 1 Picks:
It might be recency bias, but I can’t recall a Week 1 quite as tricky as what we’re about to be facing.
In a league full of parity, one thing we’re pretty confident in right now is that the Jets will be bad — maybe even historically bad — but the schedule makers do us no favors here as Gang Green faces the Bills, who are also projected to be one of the worst teams in the league and have Tyrod Taylor coming off a preseason concussion that sidelined him up until a couple days ago.
Buffalo will probably win the football game, but the ‘Pick whoever plays the Jets’ strategy is no slam dunk here.
The same goes for Texans-Jaguars. This one intrigues me a bit more despite being an AFC South showdown, but I can’t get over the huge question mark that has been and still is the Texans quarterback play. I would feel better if Bill O’Brien had given the job to rookie DeShaun Watson. Tom Savage might be worse than Blake Bortles if humanly possible.
After souring a bit on these two logical but risky options, I keep going back to the Thursday night opener between the Patriots and the Chiefs. You’d have to go back to the 2013 opener to find the last time the defending Super Bowl champion lost the following year on Opening night, and that was when the Ravens had to go on the road to Denver.
I don’t see how the Patriots can lose this game. There’s of course risk in that the Chiefs were the number two seed in the AFC East last year but will be missing a number of key contributors including Spencer Ware and Tamba Hali.
The Devil’s Advocate question here would of course be ‘Why are you going to burn such a good team so early?’ to which my response would be:
Look at the Patriots schedule and find me another week you feel great about using them. Two of their easiest games appear to be late in the season when they finish with the Bills and Jets at home. Hold them too long and run the risk of losing before you get to unleash them.
I think the Thursday night factor is freaking a lot of people out here psychologically where it would be more attractive if it was a Sunday game. I’m gonna try not to let that get to me.
I’ll trust the greatest quarterback and coach in NFL history to deliver a win on opening night and spend Sunday afternoon worrying about my fantasy teams. Give me the Patriots.
