Circa Survivor Week 6 Breakdown (2024)

We breakdown Week 6 of Circa Survivor, focusing on pick popularity, future value and pick strategy.

The Green Bay Packers get Arizona in Lambeau in Week 6 (Larry Radloff/Icon Sportswire)

Yet another week where the top two choices in Circa Survivor fell. With Seattle and San Francisco losing, we now head to Week 6 in Circa Survivor with only 221 entries left to battle for the $14,266,000 prize pool.

We highlighted six total teams as strategic options in our subscriber-only strategy breakdown, ranging from the most popular picks to contrarian options. Those that avoided San Francisco and Seattle had things break just about perfectly.

Chicago turned out to be the most common survivor pick to get through in Circa. We also noted Jacksonville and Denver as riskier, but strategically important Circa contest options at low future value, and mentioned Washington as the “countering the sharps” play. As it turns out, Washington did come in well below the public pick rate, selected by only 5% of participants, which made them a good value pick in Circa Survivor.

Here’s what you will see in the Week 6 article:

How Likely Is Circa Survivor to Reach 20 Picks?
Circa Survivor Week 6 Projected Popularity
Circa Survivor Future Value Rankings (subscriber-only content)
Week 6 Pick Strategy Thoughts (subscriber-only content)

How Likely Is Circa Survivor to Reach 20 Picks?

Each week while this article runs, we will provide an estimate of how likely the contest is to last to certain points. 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 five most used teams in Circa Survivor so far are Chicago, Houston, New York Jets, San Francisco, and Seattle. The Chargers are the only other team 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. (Our Optimal Survival Path for an entry that went “SEA-HOU-NYJ-SF-CHI” right now would be 1.1% to make it through Week 18 alive, by the way.)

After another week where the top two most popular picks lost, here are our updated projections for the over/under on remaining entries at various weekly milestones.

Contest Week	Current Projected Entries, Over/Under	Last Week's Projection, Over/Under
Week 6	160.5	220.5
Week 8	89.5	115.5
Week 10	48.5	60.5
Week 12	26.5	35.5
Week 14	9.5	12.5
Week 16	4.5	6.5
Week 18	0.5	1.5

We adjusted our projections down after yet another big elimination week. Now, we would put it closer to even money that no one will have to get a Week 18 pick right to cash in this contest (either because everyone loses by then, or there is only one entry left entering Week 18). That seemed unfathomable when the contest started five weeks ago, with over 14,000 entries.

We now project that somewhere around 26-27 entries will even make it to the Thanksgiving set of picks. We have single-digit entries projected for after Week 14, and that’s the range where a couple of more big outcomes could be decisive in ending the contest early, if remaining contestants are concentrated on them.

Circa Survivor Week 6 Estimated Popularity

We were directionally right with our projections last week. The Bears were a little more popular than we projected, and the 49ers a little lower. We called Chicago “a wild card” in this contest in trying to project their popularity, as they have holiday factors (playing on both Thanksgiving and Christmas) but not overwhelming favorites in either.

We also correctly nailed the Circa pick rates on Washington being lower, actually making them a solid pick, because they were the “poor EV fade” based on national public pick data. Jacksonville was similarly projected to be more popular in Circa than in national data, and that played out.

What do we make of this? The 2024 evidence continues to mount that the Circa crowd that remains is sharper and paying more attention to general pick data. They are shying away from specific publicly popular teams in other survivor pools.

Now to the estimates for pick popularity this week:

Team	Opponent	Circa Projected	Public	EV at Projected
PHI	CLE	33%	35%	1.03
HOU	NE	18%	21%	1.04
ATL	CAR	14%	19%	0.98
GB	ARI	12%	6%	0.98
BAL	WAS	7%	4%	1.04
TB	NO	7%	2%	0.92
CIN	NYG	4%	4%	0.92
PIT	LV	2%	2%	0.92
CHI	JAC	1%	2%	0.82
DET	DAL	1%	1%	0.93
IND	TEN	1%	1%	0.77
LAC	DEN	1%	0%	0.90

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 7 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. New for Week 6, we also listed the three projected best weeks for that team (after this week).