Circa Survivor Week 11 Breakdown (2024)

We dive into Week 11 of the 2024 Circa Survivor contest, focusing on pick popularity, future value and pick strategy.

by Jason Lisk - Nov 14, 2024

Houston and Detroit are both Week 11 options in Circa (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Icon Sportswire)

Last week, nearly one-third of the remaining Circa field was eliminated, with the Giants’ overtime loss in Germany, the Bears’ embarrassing offensive performance against New England, and Atlanta’s defeat in New Orleans. Of the 151 entries that started last week, 105 have made it to Week 11 alive.

Here’s what you will see in the Week 11 article:

• Circa Survivor Week 11 Projected Popularity
• Projected Contest Eliminations by Week
• Week 11 Future Value Rankings (subscriber-only content)
• Thanksgiving and Christmas Strategy Thoughts (subscriber-only content)
• Optimal Path and Entry Values (subscriber-only content)
• Week 11 Pick Strategy Thoughts (subscriber-only content)

Circa Survivor Week 11 Estimated Popularity

Last week, we projected the Chargers to be the most popular pick, followed by the Vikings and Giants. Those were the three most popular, but the Circa crowd was even more concentrated on those three options than expected. Kansas City, for example, did not draw a single pick in the Circa contest despite being one of the biggest favorites of the week, a clear indication they are being saved for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Here are the estimates for pick popularity this week:

• We anticipate the Dolphins, who are available to nearly everyone and favored by more than a touchdown, will be very popular in Week 11.
• Detroit could see their popularity come in a little lower than the public data because of the Thanksgiving factor, but they should still have some popularity.
• There’s more uncertainty over how the other options will shake out, and these numbers could shift based on line movement. We currently project the Minnesota Vikings as the only other team over 10% this week.

Subscribers can see our pick analysis for the Week 11 options below.

Projected Contest Eliminations by Week

After Week 3 and the high eliminations early in Circa Survivor, we started projecting the number of entries to be alive at various milestones.

We just hit another one at the end of the last week. Entering last week, we had projected 109.5 entries alive after Week 10, and two weeks ago, our end-of-Week-10 projection was 99.5 entries, so we middled that with the actual 105 number.

Here is our analysis for future milestones. This is based on our review of the most common picks and upcoming potential paths, as well as based on historical weekly elimination rates.

We used our Optimal Path and Season Planner tools to see survival rate estimates for various potential paths for entries that had used all or some of those teams. Those estimates also accounted for the two extra holiday picks.

(Our Optimal Survival Path for an entry that has already picked the most common surviving pick each week of “SEA-HOU-NYJ-SF-CHI-PHI-LAR-DEN-CIN-LAC” right now would be 6.3% to make it through Week 18 alive, by the way.)

Here are our projections entering Week 11:

Not much has changed from our previous week projections. We are now putting an Over/Under of 62.5 entries that make it to the Thanksgiving picks, and 23.5 that get out of both Thanksgiving and the Sunday/Monday picks of Week 13 (which are actually tougher in terms of expected win odds). Our projection for end of the contest is the same, an Over/Under of 4.5 entries to make it to the end.

Circa Survivor Future Value Rankings

Now, let’s look at the Future Value estimates for Circa Survivor Week 12 and beyond. This Future Value estimate is specific to the Circa contest and looks at how many weeks each team is a survivor option and how likely they are to rank highly in relative win odds for that week.

We have availability percentages in the contest for each team, and put asterisks on teams that appear on a Thanksgiving or Christmas game schedule.