Circa Survivor Week 9 Breakdown (2024)

We dive into Week 9 of the 2024 Circa Survivor contest, focusing on pick popularity, future value and pick strategy.

The Bengals and Eagles are both in Circa Survivor consideration this week (Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire)

Last week, nearly 90% of the Circa entries advanced. This was a higher rate than the public across all survivor pools for a few reasons. First, the Jets had been even more heavily used by Circa entries than the public across all survivor pools, so fewer of them picked the Jets, to incur a loss last week. Second, because Baltimore has higher Circa value as a Christmas option, they were also underpicked in Circa last week.

Of 214 entries entering last week, 191 remain, with the Jets, Dolphins, and Ravens accounting for most of the eliminations.

Here’s what you will see in the Week 9 article:

Circa Survivor Week 9 Projected Popularity
Projected Contest Eliminations by Week (added Friday, November 1)
Week 9 Future Value Rankings (subscriber-only content)
Optimal Path and Entry Values (subscriber-only content, added Friday, November 1)
Week 9 Pick Strategy Thoughts (subscriber-only content)

Circa Survivor Week 9 Estimated Popularity

We continue to see that Circa contestants this year exhibit sharper behavior, steaming up picks that look like good strategic plays, and avoiding the worst EV choices based on public pick data.

We expect some of the same this week, making for a wide-open week when pick popularity could be spread out.

Here are the estimates for pick popularity this week:

Team	Opponent	Circa Projected	Public	EV at Projected
NO	CAR	25%	11%	0.96
BAL	DEN	19%	19%	1.05
CIN	LV	18%	19%	0.99
PHI	JAC	16%	20%	1.02
MIN	IND	8%	10%	0.95
KC	TB	4%	7%	1.12
BUF	MIA	5%	5%	1.00
WAS	NYG	4%	3%	0.93
TEN	NE	1%	1%	0.90

Given where the popularity trends are heading, and that New Orleans is a higher EV choice in public data, we are going to project that the Saints, and not the Bengals or Eagles, will be the most popular Circa pick.
We expect that the Ravens will be used by more entries this week than last.
The Bengals might be a little less picked in Circa because they have a worse EV based on their public popularity figures.
Most entries will likely continue to save Kansas City, for the holiday and high future value factors.

Subscribers can see our pick analysis for the Week 9 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 “end of Week 8,” and our weekly projections were 115.5, 89.5, 120.5, and 158.5, and the actual result is 191 making it. The survivors being higher than expected is the result of nearly 90% of all entries that were alive after Week 5 are still in the contest. That is the result of three extremely high survival weeks in a row.

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” right now would be 3.3% to make it through Week 18 alive, by the way.)

Here are our projections entering Week 9:

Contest Week	Current Projected Entries, Over/Under	Last Week's Projection, Over/Under
Week 10	99.5	84.5
Week 12	54.5	45.5
Week 14	20.5	20.5
Week 16	12.5	12.5
Week 18	3.5	3.5

We have some higher survival estimates now in the next few weeks, but are still holding the end-of-contest estimates the same as last week. That’s largely because there are now some higher win odds options coming up in the near term, but the stretch from Week 13 to the Christmas picks present more uncertainty and risk, especially for entries that have used a few of the key teams.

Circa Survivor Future Value Rankings

Now, let’s look at the Future Value estimates for Circa Survivor Week 10 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.