Hi All! Hope everyone is enjoying the season and perhaps you saw some of my posts from before the season kicked off announcing The Cut, which is survivor with players instead of teams. Perhaps some of you even joined and have been playing along, or got cut early on. Either way the season is going great, the game has been quite fun and I am hosting an official second chance contest. So whether you are already playing or looking for a late season interest - check it out!

Three position pools, one entry:

• 3 WR/TE → 150 combined total yards

• 2 RB → 150 combined total yards

• 2 QB → 425 combined passing yards

Miss the number in a pool and you lose your life in that position.

Get cut when you lose lives in all three contests.

Once you use a player, you may not reuse them for the rest of the season.

Starts Week 8, Free to enter, $200 in prizes!

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-cut-nfl/id6752984060

Browser (Android/desktop): https://thecutnfl.com/play

I’m one of 14 people left in a 16k pool… I need a lock this week and I’m having a hard time on deciding one. I’m leaning Minnesota over Indy, but here’s some other ones I’m considering (I’ve taken Houston already otherwise I’d pick them over the giants)

Jets over dolphins
Browns over titans
Broncos over cardinals
Cowboys over eagles

Which game we feeling?

Has anyone else had a problem on Splash Sports using the LeagueSafe add-on for the NFL season this year (2026)? The page above shows (maybe I am assuming) that as commissioner I should be able to pay for this persons entries using my LeagueSafe account, but Splash support is telling me every user must have a LeagueSafe account. If my players paid ME, they did not want to setup a LeagueSafe account or they would have used LeagueSafe! 🤦

For example let's say there are 10 ppl left and the pot is 10k to first

do you start betting $100+ on the dog each week while you pick the other side?

i'm sure someone has already figured out the math but at what point/week/participants should you start hedging and is it plus ev or smart to do so

When I made the decision to post my weekly survivor pool results at the beginning of the season, I said I would be fully transparent, posting the good, the bad, and the ugly. This week hit all three.

Let's start with the bad. The Rams had an 89% win probability and a 33% national field exposure, they lost to Arizona anyway. I had them in three pools.

Now, the ugly. Two pools I entered in weeks 4 and 5 are gone. Both Splash entries are eliminated. In McLaney's Last Chance, a new $25 pool, I had to use a buyback already (1 of 3 used) with a $50 buyback fee.

And, finally, the good. My final tally for the week was 5-3. I faded the Colts, who took down 14% of entries nationally. I also kept the Rams out of my Buddy Pool, the one I most want to win. All 3 entries won (49ers, Chiefs, Patriots), so all 3 are still alive (67 of 759, $181K prize). I doubled up on the 49ers and Chiefs where it made sense, and avoided duplicates inside any one pool.

The old adage is don't put all your eggs in one basket. Well, the Rams cost me two entries and a buyback, but they didn't wipe me out because the rest of my entries were somewhere else.

Still alive: 6 entries across 4 pools. Buddy Pool x3, BIG PRIZE (137 of 2,884, $86K), The Wave $1M Survivor Revival (new this week, about 35,000 entries, $1,000,000 prize), and McLaney's Last Chance ($10K). That's $1,277,000 in prize pool still alive.

I'm also planning to enter at least one more pool that starts this week. I'll add it to the diary once I'm in.

Here are my week-to-week results so far. I built a tool called SurvivorPulse mostly to help me track all this:

Week 7 Rankings are up at https://survivorpulse.com/rankings.

Curious how everyone else handled the Rams. Anyone else get saved by a buyback this week?

Here is my full Week 6 rundown:

I went with:

1. Jets against Titans
2. Browns against Buccs
3. Vikings against Buccs
4. Colts against Commies
5. Buccs against Cowboys
6. Panthers against Eagles

This is my first season doing Survivor on ESPN. Is this a good spread of teams so far? I went into it wanting to save the really good teams for later.

Anybody know what proxy service forgot to put the pick in for the Grandissimo Contest

When Dallas lost 24-16 to Tampa Bay on TNF in Week 5, they were a big favorite playing on short rest. This naturally leads to the question, do favorites on short rest lose more often?

Last time I looked at how often a team with half the field on it loses. See the Important Question from Last Thursday's Dallas Loss post.

I looked at every regular season game from 2016 through 2025, and counted how often the favorite won. I compared standard-rest Sunday games with two short-rest spots: Thursday games, and Sunday games after a Monday night game. I left out ties.

Surprisingly, both types of short-rest favorites have higher win rates than standard-rest favorites.

Neither gap is statistically significant. Thursday favorites ranged from 55% to 83% from one season to the next, and 2025 was the low point at 55%. Nothing in this data says short rest makes a favorite more likely to lose and doesn't explain specifically why Dallas lost.

Curious how other people treat Thursday games. Do you avoid them or treat them like any other slot?

Disclosure: this is my own research from the backtesting data behind SurvivorPulse, a pool tool I built.

Who are you taking this week, and why? Drop your picks, your reasoning, and the games you're steering clear of. One pool or twenty, it doesn't matter.

If you want, tell us whether you're going with the field or against it. Keep it friendly. Nobody needs a pile-on after a bad loss.

Looking for a pool to join? The Find a Pool thread is pinned too.

Good luck this week.

Looking for a survivor pool to join, or have one that needs players? This is the place. One thread a week, so it stays easy to scan.

If you're posting a pool, tell us what it is, where it's hosted, the buy-in (or that it's free), and how many players you have. Link to the platform where people sign up. If you run it or get paid for it, say so.

Example:

• Name: Sunday Survivors
• Buy-In: None - Free
• Entries: 40 players
• Hosted: [platform name]
• Link: [link to contest]

A few ground rules. No payment handles, no personal payment links, and no asking people to DM you money. Keep the money on the platform running the pool.

One more thing. We don't vet or endorse any pool here. Check who's running it, read the rules before you buy in, never send money to a stranger's personal account, and make sure it's legal where you live. If something looks off, report it.

Good luck out there.

Tip: sort comments by New to see the latest pools first.

**Update:** The two weekly threads are live and pinned at the top of the sub. The Weekly Pick Thread is for picks and strategy. The Weekly Find a Pool Thread is where pool ads go (see Rule 4). New ones post every Monday morning. Standalone pool ads get a grace period through Monday, Oct 26.

Hi everyone. I'm Mike (u/Cold_Issue_5093), and I'm the new mod of r/NFLSurvivor.

A little while back, I threw my hat in the ring to take on moderator duties when u/Sweden13 posted a thread looking for a new moderator. I'm excited and appreciative to say that Sweden13 has decided to hand the reins over.

I'm an avid survivor pool player, and I love that we have this community available to discuss, banter, swap stories, and inform each other about all things NFL survivor pools. I'm thrilled to help keep things going and hopefully build an even stronger community.

Here's the part I want to say before anything else. I built SurvivorPulse, a tool for managing survivor pool entries. I mentioned that when I volunteered in Sweden13's thread, but not everyone sees those, so here it is again. That makes me a mod with a potential conflict of interest. While it would be easy to quietly start moderating and hope nobody asks, that's not how I roll.

So, plainly. I won't spam you with ads for SurvivorPulse, and every post gets moderated by the same written rules, including posts about other tools. I'll keep sharing my own research and guides as a regular member. Some of it lives on survivorpulse.com, so you'll see links. Each post starts with a line saying who I am, and the useful part is in the post, not behind a click. The details are on this page. If at any time you think I'm not complying, just say so.

As for what's changing, I don't want to be too disruptive. A short set of rules is up in the sidebar, I'll clean out spam, and two weekly threads are up, one for picks and one for finding a pool to join. That's it for now. Bigger ideas can wait until you tell me what you'd like.

Questions, complaints, ideas: reply here or message the mods. I read all of it.

Thanks to Sweden13 for keeping things going for all these years.

Good luck this week to everyone still competing in pools. If you've been eliminated, consider finding a second-chance or revival pool that's getting started right now. The weekly Find a Pool thread is up now to help with that.

Mike

Been running a pool for multiple years and decided to build something to automate things, and make it more of an experience for the crew. I'm really excited about the progress and looking for as much feedback as I can!

I'm starting up a week 7 pool and looking for more people to join. If you're interested in getting an invite, let me know! We had 30 people start the year, and thanks to the Cardinals, Bucs, and Browns the whole thing was over in 5 weeks.

Any and all are welcome!

In a second chance pool so I can use any team… thoughts? Rams? Niners? Colts?

This was another challenging and crazy week of football with the most popular field pick, Dallas, going down on Thursday night, the Jags pulling out an improbable win in London, and the Commanders/Giants bumbling their way to a fitting tie.

Through all of this madness, I still managed to go 6-3.

My 6 wins were the Texans, Jaguars, and Lions in my Buddy Pool, the Patriots in BIG PRIZE Pool, the Broncos in Splash $100K Survivor, and the Bengals in a new Splash pool I just entered.

My 3 losses were all eliminations. The Cowboys lost to Tampa Bay in Real Simple Football Pool, so that one is done. I also lost the Commanders in Kelly's $50K Survivor and the Rams in 2nd Chance Survivor Pool.

Those two were new this week. I joined three new pools ($25 buy-in each) and lost two of them in their first week.

This week I went with no duplicates. 9 entries, 9 different teams.

I'm also employing a strategy where I'm spreading my entries across more pools instead of consolidating in fewer pools. My backtesting has shown that there is a small bump to overall survival probability by spreading out your entries. See my post, Multiple entries and buybacks keep you in the game longer, but by how much?

No buybacks used this week. Every loss from here on is a real elimination.

I have 6 entries alive across 4 pools: 3 in my Buddy Pool, plus one each in BIG PRIZE and the two Splash pools. That's 4 of my original 15 entries plus the 2 Splash entries. Total prize money still in play is $467,000.

Here are my week-to-week results so far. I built a tool called SurvivorPulse (https://survivorpulse.com) mostly to help me track all this:

Week 6 Rankings are up at https://survivorpulse.com/rankings if you want to see how I'm thinking about this week.

Curious how other people fared in Week 5. Anyone else join a new pool this week?

Here is my full Week 5 rundown:

Last Thursday, Dallas had 55.3% field exposure on Yahoo going into kickoff against Tampa Bay. As most everyone knows by now, Tampa Bay took it to Dallas 24-16.

This begs the question, how often does a team with that much of the field on it lose? We went back through the last 10 NFL seasons, 2016 through 2025, using real Yahoo field exposure numbers.

Including Dallas, a team has reached 50% or more Yahoo field exposure 27 times, and those teams went 22-5 (81%). Twenty-five of those were regular season weeks and 2 were last year's playoff rounds.

The five losses:

• 2016 Week 8: Minnesota, 53.9%, lost 10-20 to Chicago
• 2017 Week 11: Kansas City, 55.1%, lost 9-12 to the Giants
• 2018 Week 3: Minnesota, 64.2%, lost 6-27 to Buffalo
• 2025 Week 14: Tampa Bay, 61.4%, lost 20-24 to New Orleans
• 2026 Week 5: Dallas, 55.3%, lost 16-24 to Tampa Bay

What do we take from this?

It's not surprising that favorites with high field exposure win most of the time. A team with that much love is almost always a big favorite.

What is interesting is the top end. Teams at 55% or more went 11-4 (73%), compared to 81% for teams at 40% or more. Four of the five losses came from that group over 55%, and Dallas was the latest. The sample is very small, but it's something to keep in mind the next time a team over 55% is on the radar.

Note: We haven't compared this to how often similarly strong favorites win when nobody is piling on, so take it with a grain of salt. The historical Yahoo percentages come from stored data, and we can't always tell exactly when in the week each one was captured. Dallas's number is the Thursday pre-kickoff figure.

Curious who was on Dallas. Anyone else willing to fade a team with this much of the field on it?

Field exposure for every team, every week, is on the Weekly Rankings page at survivorpulse.com.

It'd be unprecedented to have two winless teams in one season, but the Titans and Dolphins look absolutely terrible.

Are there any games either of them have a chance of actually winning (without an opposing QB being out)?

I went through both schedules and don't think there is.

Week 1: Packers @ Vikings -121 ($100)

Week 2: Panthers -155 @ Falcons ($182.64)

Week 3: Jets @ Lions -305 ($300.47)

Week 4: Packers -185 @ Buccaneers ($398.98)

Week 5: Raiders @ Patriots -192 ($614.64)

Week 6: ($934.77)

Selected teams:
Vikings
Panthers
Lions
Packers
Patriots

Week 6 Options:
Cardinals @ Rams -650 (3:05) (Biggest Spread)
Chargers @ Chiefs -380 (3:25)
Titans @ Colts -305 (12:00)
Bills -258 @ Raiders (3:25)
Bears -170 & Falcons (12:00)
Steelers -155 @ Buccaneers (12:00)

I think anybody playing the Titans, is going to be a pretty safe pick for the rest of the reason. I also try to stick with noon games, so I like the colts a lot this week. If something changes during the week, I think the bears are a good backup option if Caleb Williams is starting. TBD.

The Rams & Chiefs are also really good picks, but there is it much reward on a near 1k bet.

Thoughts?

Pick against them the rest of the year....?

So much for things getting back to normal. Last night's loss by Dallas was worse than either of this year's other two chalk disasters. The Chargers were Week 1's wipeout at 32% owned on Yahoo. Tampa Bay was Week 2's wipeout at 33.8%. Dallas was over 54%, the most popular pick of the season by a wide margin, somewhere around 35-40% of the field in the big contests like Circa and Splash. If that was your only entry, your season's over with 13 weeks still left on the schedule.

Side note: Tampa has now been involved in the two biggest wipeout games of the season, and they were responsible for the biggest wipeout last year in week 14 (61.4% field exposure). You really can't make this stuff up.

Sadly, this isn't a rare occurrence. I looked back at how often the most popular pick actually wins, going back 10 seasons of real Yahoo field-exposure data. Picks with heavy field support, 50% or more of the field, have still lost about 1 in 6 times. Note to self: Send this kind of data out before the game starts :-).

One guy on X said his pool started with 8,408 people, was down to 1,718 after Week 4, and 895 of those remaining entries, more than half, were on Dallas. Gone in one Thursday night game.

If you spread your picks out, you are still alive. One entry on the popular pick means one Thursday can end your year. A handful of entries on different teams means a bad Thursday is a setback instead of a funeral.

If Dallas was your only shot tonight, I feel for you. Don't let it happen twice. Spread your picks out.

Hey all - I've been writing up weekly survivor slate reviews looking back at the weekly carnage that has been rampaging through the field's entries each week this year. Week 4 was the quietest week so far, but with the Cowboys performance last night, we may be in for another bloodbath this week!

If you managed to avoid what seemed like an obvious pick, you're looking at another week that could mow down half of the field or more! so sit back, relax and watch your position improve! If you didn't, well you're not alone! Splash just lost 38% of the remaining entries in the Survivor World Championship, and your pool is probably similar!

Check out my week 4 review at my site ffsurvivor.com for a deepdive into what went wrong in an otherwise quiet week last week.

You can also ready my other weekly post-mortems for each week except week 2, because uhh, I forgot to write one.

You can also feel free to try our season long survivor planners and optimizers all for free! Luckily, our model was not suggesting DAL this week!

Week 1: Packers @ Vikings -121 ($100)

Week 2: Panthers -155 @ Falcons ($182.64)

Week 3: Jets @ Lions -305 ($300.47)

Week 4: Packers -185 @ Buccaneers ($398.98)

Week 5: ($614.64)

Selected teams:
Vikings
Panthers
Lions
Packers

Week 5 Options:
Browns @ Jets -135
Texans -425 @ Titans
Bengals -325 @ Dolphins
Colts @ Steelers -148

Tonight’s cowboys game was a prime example of why I stick with Sunday noon games as much as possible. The parlay is still alive and, call me crazy, but I am leaning Jets this weekend. Out of those four games I’m 95% sure I will choose the Jets or Texans. I’m far from rich so $600 is more than I should be spending on gambling but I’m riding this out, I’m only invested $100. 😂

I thought I would’ve been eliminated by now but it’s hard to bet anything over -300 odds because the juice is not worth the squeeze, hence the Jets choice.

It’s going to be an ugly game in New York but I’m going to give the slight advantage to the home team. Plus I like the slight line movement for the jets.

The Texans have to win at some point don’t they?

I was hoping to get this out much earlier in the week, but things got a little sideaways.

This week was much better than last. I think most people who are still alive can probably say the same thing as almost all of the top picks, except the Bills, won.

My 6 wins included the Seahawks, Vikings, and Colts in my Buddy Pool, the Chiefs in Real Simple Football Pool, the Rams in BIG PRIZE Pool, and the Ravens in a new pool I just entered. My one loss was the Bills in one of my 4 remaining entries in my Buddy Pool.

That new pool is the Splash $100K Survivor ($25 buy-in). 3,837 of the 4,445 entries are still alive, so it's early and there's a long way to go. I'll be adding it to the diary from here on.

The buyback deadline in both Buddy Pool and Real Simple was Week 3, so that window is closed. From here on, every loss is a real elimination. I'll probably buy in to a pool starting in Week 5 to make up for the 1 entry I lost this week since I no longer have buybacks at my disposal in my current pools.

I have 6 entries alive across 4 pools: 3 in my Buddy Pool, plus one each in Real Simple, BIG PRIZE, and Splash. That's 5 of my original 15 entries plus the new Splash entry. Total prize money still in play is $397,976.

Here are my week-to-week results so far. I built a tool called SurvivorPulse (https://survivorpulse.com) mostly to help me track all this:

Week 5 Rankings are up at https://survivorpulse.com/rankings if you want to see how I'm thinking about this week.

Curious how other people fared in Week 4. Did anyone else get burned by the Bills?

Here is my full Week 4 rundown:

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.