Circa Survivor Week 3 Breakdown (2024)

We breakdown Week 3 of Circa Survivor, focusing on pick popularity, future value and pick strategy.

Myles Garrett will try to push the Browns past the Giants in Week 3 (Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire)

After just two weeks of the Circa Survivor contest, nearly three-quarters of all entries have already been eliminated. Six of the eight most popular picks lost last week, including the top choice, Baltimore. As we head into Circa Survivor Week 3, only 3,877 entries remain in the quest for the $14,266,000 prize.

Circa Survivor Week 3 Estimated Popularity

Last week, we expected the Chargers to be substantially more popular in Circa than in the public pick data based on entries wanting to save future value and the fact that so many other options were playing on one of the two holiday slates.

In the end, Baltimore was picked at about the rate we expected, but Houston (who we project as a slight favorite on Christmas) got pushed up in popularity at 23.6%. The Chargers were only picked by 14.7% last week. Was it the falling point spread, where the line dropped to -5 by Saturday night? Or are this year’s contestants collectively more conscious of EV than the 2023 crowd?

Now, let’s turn to our pick popularity estimates for Circa Survivor Week 3. We’ve also included the current public pick rates across all pools and an EV estimate based on projected pick rates and market odds. Note that the EV calculation does not account for future value.

Team	Opponent	Circa Projected	Public	EV at Projected
CLE	NYG	23%	14%	0.98
TB	DEN	21%	24%	0.98
LV	CAR	17%	21%	0.95
CIN	WAS	12%	13%	1.10
NYJ	NE	8%	9%	1.04
SF	LAR	6%	4%	1.13
BUF	JAC	5%	4%	1.03
SEA	MIA	3%	3%	1.01
KC	ATL	1%	2%	0.95
DET	ARI	1%	2%	0.87

We do not have any significant holiday impact this week, as none of the most popular picks in survivor pools play on either holiday slate. The closest is Seattle, which was used heavily in the contest in Week 1 to advance and plays Chicago on Christmas.

As a result, for the most part, we are projecting the Circa pick rates to be closely aligned with the public numbers we are seeing. The exceptions are that we would project the Circa crowd, which tends to be a little sharper, to push “low future value” Cleveland up more based on a better EV and higher market win odds than “low future value” Las Vegas. But we project both to be fairly popular picks, and the top three in national data will most likely reflect the top three in Circa this week.

We also expect the Thursday night factor will play into the Jets’ pick rates. Some proxies require all of an individual’s multiple entries to be submitted on Thursday if a person is using any of those entries on the Thursday night game, so that element may limit how many are willing to submit all their picks by Thursday.

Future Value, After Week 3

Now, let’s look at the Future Value estimates for Circa Survivor Week 3 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.

Also, this week, we added the contest availability percentages for each team and put asterisks on teams that appear on a Thanksgiving or Christmas game schedule.