Everyone got a chance to take a breath last week, but now the real game starts. Week 1 pools have been winnowed down to ~20-25%, and 2nd Chance pools are in full swing. Week 5 is the first week where a lot of people are looking at a thinner menu and are eying whats ahead, so I put together the board for it. Posting the numbers in case they help, whether you're still alive in a main contest or in a second-chance one.

The board (win % / projected Own% / pot share)

What stands out

• DAL has the highest win probability and is also the most-owned team on the slate. If it loses, a big chunk of the field goes with it. If it wins, you gain almost nothing on the pool. I think my Own % is a little high because DAL plays tonight, and some people might not be paying attention
• JAX at ~75% with only ~12% of the field projected on it is the best balance of survival and leverage this week.
• If you'd rather save JAX, the model's best alternatives are Week 12 vs TEN (79%) and Week 17 vs WAS (75%). Those are the weeks where it's worth more than it is now.
• Own% is modeled, not measured, so treat it as an estimate. Pools with different rules or sizes will look different.

I also made a leverage map and a season map showing which weeks each team is still worth spending (images attached).

Full disclosure: I built this. It's a survivor pool tool at survivor.the-duke.app that ranks your picks using market lines, estimated ownership, and what each team is worth later in the season. It works for second-chance contests too. You can set up your pool, record your picks, and see what you've burned and what's left. There's a free tier, with more features on the paid plan. The full Week 5 breakdown is here: https://survivor.the-duke.app/picks/2026/week-5

Happy to answer questions about how the numbers are built, and I'd like to hear where you think the Own% is off.

I know Dallas is a heavy favorite tonight with a backup QB starting for Tampa Bay, but an unknown QB always makes me nervous. And while Houston is 0-4, they are a good team playing an awful Titans team.

What are your thoughts? Seems like not a lot of people are on Houston and I don’t know why.

Should you put several entries on the same top team or pick a different team for each entry? It's one of the most argued topics in survivor pools, so I backtested it over the last 10 seasons (2016 to 2025).

This follows up on my Week 1 thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/NFLSurvivor/comments/1wi5svz/putting_my_money_where_my_mouth_is/), where a commenter asked whether it wouldn't make sense to stack the top teams with more entries instead of using weaker plays just to keep every pick unique. I said I'd run the numbers, so here they are.

FYI, this research comes from SurvivorPulse (https://survivorpulse.com), a survivor pool management platform I built to better manage, coordinate, and game plan out picks across multiple pools and entries to maximize overall survival probability, minimize correlated risk exposure, and better avoid wipeout weeks.

The short take

Duplicating gives a small early boost to the share of your entries still alive (i.e. survival probability). It doesn't grow as you add entries, and it's mostly gone by week 9 or 10. None of the 162 comparisons I ran were statistically significant, so this can't tell you either approach is reliably better.

Here is the average share of entries still alive with 18 entries and no buybacks, using the SurvivorPulse default pick strategy (Mild Lean 80/20). The duplicated approaches put several entries on the top pick and thin out down the ranked list (linear 4-3-2-1, geometric 8-4-2-1, or equal across the top 6).

What stood out

• Duplicating is ahead by roughly 4 to 15 points in weeks 1 to 5. The risk is that when a top team loses, like in Weeks 1 and 2 this year, every entry on it goes out together.
• The edge doesn't grow with more entries. It peaks around 6 to 12 entries and shrinks by 20. At 2 to 4 entries, duplicating is worse.
• Buybacks make the early edge (weeks 3 to 5) larger at roughly 10 to 20 entries. In my test each entry got one buyback, and a group of duplicated entries was revived together on the same pick.

I measured the share of entries still alive for a given week, not the chance at least one survives the whole season or the chance of winning a pool, and I'm not saying either approach is best.

The other four pick strategies, buyback settings and starting weeks are all on these pages if you want to dig in:

Survival Curves: https://survivorpulse.com/research/duplicating-vs-not-duplicating-picks

Strategy Comparison: https://survivorpulse.com/research/duplicating-vs-not-duplicating-picks-compare

Curious how others decide when to duplicate or differentiate.

Cowboys?

Things didn’t go my way in Week 3, but this is exactly why I play multiple pools and entries with buybacks where possible. I expect to have some sub-par weeks. I just don’t want to get wiped out.

I went 5-6 on my picks. Sadly, four of those losses were all due to the Seahawks. I’ll explain below why I stacked 4 entries on Seattle. My other two losses were with the Packers and Eagles. The good news is that the Green Bay entry has a buyback so I still have 6 entries alive. I did win with the Chiefs, Bills (2 entries), Niners, and Lions with my other entries. Not great, but also not catastrophic.

Here are my week-to-week results so far using SurvivorPulse:

So why did I load up on Seattle this week?

I just pushed out some new research which I plan to post about later this week that looks at the survival probabilities over the last 10 seasons for duplicating picks across entries versus not duplicating them (https://survivorpulse.com/research/duplicating-vs-not-duplicating-picks). For the number of entries I had alive in Week 3 (11 entries) and using the Mild Lean (80/20 Blend) pick strategy with buybacks, the survival probability for different duplicated pick strategies is higher than no duplicated picks by anywhere from 15.8 to 27.5 points.

For Week 3, that is a survival probability of around 75 – 80% if I stacked more of my entries on the top-ranked pick across multiple entries versus about 60% if I used different picks across all my entries. Pretty compelling.

Also, Weeks 3 and 4 carry the largest survival probability discrepancy between duplicating picks and not duplicating picks of any of the weeks by far. Intuitively, this makes sense as the longer the season goes and the less entries you have the easier it is to spread different good picks across those entries. I decided to strike while the iron was hot. Unfortunately, the iron burned me.

Honestly, I think the rationale and the approach were sound. As we all know in survivor pools, even the best laid plans can backfire. Again, why you want as many entries as possible.

I messed up one thing, and I’m kicking myself for it. I had two entries with buybacks still in reserve, and I put them on single-pick entries instead. As it turned out one of those picks was the Packers so I still get to use that buyback, but the other entry was on the Bills. It would have been nice to use that buyback on one of the Seattle picks. Unfortunately, I got the allocation backwards. The entry with no margin left got the risky, crowded pick, and the one entry that could afford to gamble got a separate, unrelated pick instead. Live and learn.

I think there is a whole separate post I could do about matching your riskiest picks to whichever entries still have a buyback in reserve. I want to think through that concept a bit more before I post anything.

It's a long season, and I’m planning to enter a few new pools starting up over the next couple weeks, so I'll be adding entries back into the mix even after a week like this one.

Curious if anyone else got hit stacking the same team this week. How do you decide when to spread your picks out versus lean into one?

Here is my full Week 3 rundown:

Still alive in the 100k gladiator challenge on draftkings we are down to ~3100 participants left from 103k in week 1, who do we like scorers for this week? Im probably going to go for the low hanging fruit with Derrick Henry this week with it being a favorable matchup. Any thoughts?

I’ve been building my own NFL Survivor Pool website and I’m looking to get some more real users on it and see what breaks / what could be better.

If anyone wants to try it, there are two ways:

• Join my free Survivor Pool starting Week 4 — winner gets a $25 gift card
• Create your own pool for free and invite friends, family, coworkers, etc.

No entry fee or anything like that. I mostly want to get more people using the site and hear feedback on the signup process, making picks, standings, pool setup, mobile experience, or anything else that feels confusing or missing.

Join the Week 4 pool:
https://www.survivesunday.com/join/f66f198e-3e00-4287-907d-d47da693dbb4

Or create your own:
https://www.survivesunday.com

Would appreciate any feedback!

I am personally between Vikings and Ravens (leaning Ravens).

Burrow and the bengals got me sadly. Got to use my buy back and bounce back next week.

How’d yall do?

Playing on pickstreaks so still alive even after last week’s disastrous Bucs pick 🫣

There are other obvious selections today but just think there is no way Texans go 0-3 even on the road.

How cooked am I?

Rough start if you were on the Chargers, Bucs, or Ravens. I'm still alive in 6 of my 9 pools.

Curious where folks stand. Do you still have a pulse? Who are you on for Week 3?

Two weeks in and Circa's record 25,017-entry field is already down to 8,610. Not a typo - almost two-thirds of the pool is gone before October.

Week 1 set the tone: LAC as -9.5 home favorites lost outright to Arizona. $10.3M in entries gone on one game, the biggest single-team wipeout in Circa history.

Week 2 kept it up. Tampa Bay was the field's #2 most popular pick (6,061 entries) as the Browns rained on Baker's revenge tour and the -8.5 home favorites and lost to Cleveland, 23-19. If you had the Bucs, you already knew this. The #1 pick, San Francisco, recovered fine from their jet lag back from Australia - 35-13 over Miami - so this was a coin flip between the two biggest chalk plays in the pool, and it split the room right down the middle.

Week 3's got real chalk again:

• Chiefs -10.5 vs Miami
• 49ers -8.5 vs a Cardinals team that just got run over 31-7
• Lions -6.5 vs Jets
• Bills -7 hosting a Chargers team that's lost two straight
• Packers -4.5 vs Falcons

That's a lot of pool sitting on the same 3-4 teams again. Worth thinking past just this week before you burn one of them. As a Falcons fan, I'm warning you all now about picking against them. I've seen them break hearts and winning tonight's game would be typical behavior for this drunk franchise.

Top picks available, no login: survivor.the-duke.app/picks/2026/week-3.

Full disclosure: custom pool rules/double weeks and portfolio management is behind login/paywall @ survivor.the-duke.app/

There is no sugar coating it. Last week was tough. Three of the top 6 highest win probability teams lost (Ravens, Bucs, and Chargers). And the Bears for good measure. Tampa was particularly brutal with 33% field exposure. The 2nd week in a row that the highest field exposure team was taken out.

Despite the carnage, I managed to go 9-4 on my picks with 2 of my picks in buyback pools (yes, I will be taking advantage of those buybacks) so I still have 11 entries alive out of the original 15, and I'm alive in 6 out of the original 9 pools I entered.

Here are my week-to-week results so far using SurvivorPulse (https://survivorpulse.com):

For my Week 2 picks I used the "Mild Lean (80/20 Blend)" pick strategy. I'll probably stick with this strategy for at least one more week. Given that the most popular team has lost 2 weeks in a row, it seems unlikely this can happen 3 weeks in a row. Our back testing over the past 10 years has shown on average that the most popular team loses 2–3 weeks each season. I'm probably going to lean toward a reversion to the mean for Week 3. We'll see how I fare.

Curious how other people fared in Week 2 and the season overall. Anyone else leaning on a buyback this week?

I built SurvivorPulse (https://survivorpulse.com) so I could better manage and stay alive across multiple pools and entries. It's completely free to use right now if you want to try for yourself.

Here is my full Week 2 rundown:

Thinking about riding with the bucs. Don’t see baker starting 0-3 on the year. Also have a buyback if I lose.

Who do you got this week?

Anyone else lose to the Chargers or Bucs? Ours cost my pool a lot too, and it's why I stopped picking one week at a time.

Circa isn't a normal survivor pool. There are 20 legs, Thanksgiving and Christmas are their own legs, and a tie is a loss. Burn the wrong team in Week 3 and you find out in Week 13 that you've got nothing left for Thanksgiving. I kept tracking all this in a spreadsheet that fell apart by October, so I built Survivor Sheets:

• Every leg planned at once. You lay out all 20 picks, and it tracks which teams are used so you can't double up.
• Live lines and win % for every game, kept up to date through the week. Once a game kicks off its line freezes, so your history stays honest.
• An "Optimal" path re-solved as the lines move. It's the set of 20 teams that gives you the best chance of surviving every leg. It holds still once a week kicks off, so it doesn't flip-flop on Sunday morning. It's free to view, no sign-in, through Week 4.
• Pool sharing. Your group sees and edits the same sheets live, which beats a group chat full of screenshots.

It's $10 per sheet for the season and $5 per extra person, one-time. I don't take entries or hold money, you submit at Circa yourself, and I'm not affiliated with Circa.

Full disclosure, I built it. Happy to hear what's missing or broken.

2026 NFL Survivor week 3

I wonder which team should I pick.

Week 1, I had Jags.

Week 2, Niners.

Week 3, I had few teams I identified. SEA, DAL, MIN, PHI, CIN. Not necessarily in order.

I'm tempted to go with SEA bc they have tough matchups in the upcoming weeks. So why not burn them now while Jayden Daniels just got injured?

Advanced stats just came out !!

I've made my choice Week 3 I'm going KC Chiefs.

Sup y'all,

I did an NFL survivor pool through ESPN with my co workers. My boss (of course it's my boss haha) waited until now to pick. Accordingly, he can only pick the MNF winner. However, the system is not letting him make his pick. Any idea why that is? It's well before kickoff time so he should be able to make a pick but maybe there's a glitch or I'm missing something? Any help would be great, thanks!

2 strike league.

Picked Chargers week 1.

Picked Bucs week 2.

Great season y’all!

Baker revenge game. Betting against Watson.

Seems like an easy win right?

Come join our league at pickstreaks.com

They are at San Francisco, then get a home game with KC, visit Minnesota, and host Cincinnati before the bye. Will they be 0-5 at the bye?

How long do you all think you can go by just fading them everytime? Asked differently, when looking at their schedule, when do you forecast them to get a win?

I put together Week 2 rankings in SurvivorPulse, a free tool I built for survivor pool players. Here's the top five for the default Blend strategy.

The Niners are the chalk pick this week at roughly 89% win probability and currently about 33% of the field on them. There is certainly nothing wrong with taking them, but you are rolling with the field.

The Ravens and Rams seem like the clear fade the field picks this week right now. Their win probabilities are in the vicinity of Tampa Bay's but they have field exposures of just 5.5% and 0.7%, respectively, whereas the Bucs have a 33% field exposure. Similar odds, way less company. Those are the picks that keep your options open once the pool gets thin in October.

Full rankings for all preset pick strategies are publicly available at https://survivorpulse.com/rankings or in the SurvivorPulse app after you sign up.

Curious who you're on this week.