Circa Survivor Week 9 Strategy & Picks (2025)

We cover Circa Survivor Week 9 strategy and picks, where the Rams, Packers, and Chargers should dominate the picks in the contest.

by Jason Lisk - Oct 30, 2025

Circa Survivor is down to 2,057 entries for Week 9 after nearly half the pool went out last week, driven almost entirely by losses from Atlanta and Cincinnati.

In this post, we’ll review what last week means for the contest moving forward while outlining expectations and identifying potential picks/paths for Week 9 and beyond.

We’ll also include a quick Circa Grandissimo update, where 13 entries remain in the race for $6.9 million.

Reminder: Our Circa Survivor Picks Product provides current-week data and projections, as well as future-week projections and other tools.

Circa Survivor Strategy Show: Week 9

Jason Lisk and Spencer Limbach break down Circa Survivor Picks and Strategy every week on the PoolGenius YouTube Channel.

Here’s the video for Week 9 (recorded Wednesday afternoon):

Circa Survivor Week 9: Projected Pick Popularity

Our Circa Survivor Data Grid currently projects the most popular Week 9 survivor picks as:

• Los Angeles Rams – 48%
• Los Angeles Chargers – 25%
• Green Bay Packers – 20%
• New England Patriots – 2%
• Baltimore Ravens (THU) – 2%
• Detroit Lions – 2%

It projects as a week where the Circa pool will love L.A. We project a whopping 93% to be concentrated on the top three picks this week. The only other teams favored by a touchdown or more are Baltimore and Detroit, two teams that are likely to be saved at higher rates because of the holidays.

How Many Winners Should We Expect in 2025?

Each week, we’ll update this section with an Over/Under on the projected number of winners (or the projected finishing week if the contest looks likely to end before anyone reaches 20-0).

Last week, we had the Over/Under at 20.5, but then we had a week where more than half the pool was eliminated, and the teams that resulted in those eliminations had a big impact on the future outlook.

Because Atlanta and Cincinnati were the two lowest-value teams for the future of last week’s options, everyone who got through had to use teams that are quite valuable. Also, the way the big elimination weeks have worked out has had an indirect effect on Detroit’s availability, even though the Lions were on a bye last week.

That’s because the other big elimination (Week 5) featured Detroit and Indianapolis as easily the most common picks on surviving entries. But then, Indianapolis was also the most common pick on surviving picks in Week 8. That means that a much higher percentage of the teams that had survived with the Colts in Week 5 were eliminated in Week 8 with Atlanta or Cincinnati. Meanwhile, a lot of the Detroit pickers in Week 5 were able to come back and pick the Colts last week.

As a result, Detroit has gone from 51% to only 31% available in Circa without playing another game. That reduction in one of the highest value teams means other picks will draw even more volume on some of those key weeks, setting up conditions for other wipeouts.

As a result, we are lowering our projection to an Over/Under of 12.5 winners.

In addition, we will project 440.5 entries to make it to the Thanksgiving picks in the contest, and 60.5 entries to make it to the Christmas games.

Week 9 Projected Future Value

Our Future Value rankings (available in the Data Grid) show the following top teams entering Week 9. We also list the availability in parentheses.

1. Detroit Lions (31% available)

2. Kansas City Chiefs (53% available)

3. Baltimore Ravens (76% available)

4. Buffalo Bills (32% available)

5. Green Bay Packers (33% available)

6. Denver Broncos (32% available)
7. Indianapolis Colts (2% available)
8. Seattle Seahawks (45% available)
9. Los Angeles Rams (80% available)

10. New England Patriots (52% available)

This chart should illustrate why we have lowered our projections on contest winners and increased the risk late in the year. The only teams on our Top 10 available to more than 53% of the Circa pool are Baltimore and the Rams, and that Rams number is about to change drastically this week.

The average entry has 4.36 of these teams available entering Week 9, so fewer than half, while there are still 12 of 20 picks remaining in the contest.

Circa Survivor Week 9 Strategy Breakdown

Instead of prescribing exact picks and who you must take, I will discuss reasonable options and arguments for picking them (as well as identify teams I think you should avoid for clear strategic reasons).

First, let’s get to my teams to avoid in Week 9.

Teams to Potentially Avoid in Circa Survivor Week 9

Here are the teams I believe you should strategically avoid picking for Week 9: