Circa Survivor Week 5 Breakdown (2024)

We breakdown Week 5 of Circa Survivor, focusing on pick popularity, future value and pick strategy.

Circa Survivor Week 5 is here. After three straight weeks of the most popular pick losing, we finally got the biggest favorite and most popular pick through in the Circa Survivor contest, with the 49ers cruising to victory. However, last week’s next most popular team, the New York Jets, lost a grueling 10-9 game to the Denver Broncos. It was an excruciating way to go out, with the Jets putting the final bow on the defeat with a missed field goal in the final seconds after getting a second chance at survival.

Like several Circa contestants, we thought the Jets were a really good pick last week, especially given that a majority of the pool had already used them. It didn’t work out that way. The Circa pool is now down to 480 entries from 642 to start last week, with the Jets accounting for the majority of those eliminations. This leaves only 3.4% of all entries still alive after four weeks.

Here’s what you will see in this week’s article:

• How Likely Is Circa Survivor to Reach 20 Picks?
• Circa Survivor Week 5 Projected Popularity
• Circa Survivor Future Value Rankings (subscriber-only content)
• Week 5 Pick Strategy Thoughts (subscriber-only content)

How Likely Is Circa Survivor to Reach 20 Picks?

Last week, we provided estimates for pool survival rates and how likely a contest would go the distance. That analysis is based on our review of the most common picks and upcoming potential paths, as well as based on historical weekly elimination rates.

For example, the four most used teams in Circa Survivor so far are the New York Jets, Houston, San Francisco, and Seattle. The Chargers and Buffalo Bills are the only other teams used by more than 20% of currently alive entries. So 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.

We’ve noticed some questionable estimates regarding the likelihood of the contest ending early, which are not supported by our data or methodologies.

Here’s our updated projection. We also list our current projected over/under for the remaining entries at various weekly milestones compared to our estimates last week.

Contest Week	Current Projected Entries, Over/Under	Last Week's Projection, Over/Under
Week 6	220.5	240.5
Week 8	115.5	120.5
Week 10	60.5	65.5
Week 12	35.5	39.5
Week 14	12.5	12.5
Week 16	6.5	6.5
Week 18	1.5	1.5

Our overall estimate remains unchanged: we project about a 50% chance that multiple contestants will finish with a perfect 20-0 record rather than the contest ending earlier. Of course, this could change if a chop agreement is made in the final weeks to conclude the contest.

We did change some estimates for earlier week milestones for the following reasons:

• Week 5 is a pretty tough one now, and we could see an above-average elimination rate;
• Some of the preferred path options show that strategic players are more likely to take more risks pre-Thanksgiving, to create higher advance rates late; and
• The win odds options from Thanksgiving to Week 16 actually improved some, including what was a tough Week 13 Sunday slate, which has relatively better options now than it appeared a week ago.

Circa Survivor Week 5 Estimated Popularity

The 49ers ended up being even more popular than we projected last week, though we did have them as the single most popular pick. Ultimately, 43% of the Circa pool picked them last week. That popularity came at the expense of Houston, who was less picked relative to expectation, as those looking at public pick popularity data avoided them as a modest EV choice (and one that plays on Christmas). Houston also saw line movement against them from the time we wrote our initial analysis and the Saturday pick deadline at Circa.

Still, we are seeing some evidence that sharper players and those paying attention to general pick data are shying away from specific publicly popular teams in other survivor pools. We’ll cover that more in our strategy section below.

Now to the estimates for pick popularity this week:

Team	Opponent	Circa Projected	Public	EV at Projected
SEA	NYG	34%	34%	0.95
SF	ARI	27%	16%	1.07
CHI	CAR	10%	9%	1.01
WAS	CLE	6%	14%	0.99
JAC	IND	5%	2%	0.95
KC	NO	4%	5%	1.13
GB	LAR	4%	5%	0.98
MIN	NYJ	3%	6%	0.94
NE	MIA	2%	2%	0.85
DEN	LV	2%	1%	0.93
BAL	CIN	1%	2%	0.96
PIT	DAL	1%	0%	0.96

This is a very tough week. Seattle and San Francisco are the two biggest favorites, and we project them to be the most popular, even though both already rank in the top four in contest past usage.

Outside of those two, the options get risky. Kansas City is a 5-point favorite but has a lot of future value. They are projected to be a big favorite in multiple future weeks and in play for both a Thanksgiving or Christmas pick.

Outside of those three teams, no other team is favored by more than four points this week.

Washington is the third most popular across all survivor pools, at 13%. We project that will cause them to be picked at a lower rate in Circa, based on recent pick patterns. We also think other low-future value options like Jacksonville and Denver will be a little more popular in Circa than in national data.

Chicago is a wildcard. They play on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. But they are a projected underdog on Thanksgiving at Detroit and somewhere around a pick’em on Christmas at home against Seattle. So, how important will people view them as a save? We are going to project them near the public pick rate, but we could see them getting steamed up a bit from that.

Subscribers can read our pick strategy analysis below.

Circa Survivor Future Value Rankings

Now, let’s look at the Future Value estimates for Circa Survivor Week 6 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.