Week 11 Survivor Pick Strategy & Advice (2023)
Week 11 in survivor pools has a lot of options, as several teams are favored by more than 10 points.
Our Lions are 7-2 going into a matchup with the Bears (Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire)
Week 11 in survivor pools features five different teams favored by double digits, as we are seeing some matchups that look pretty uneven. The AFC South also moves to the fore, as both Jacksonville and Houston are among the more popular options this week.
In these weekly columns, we explore strategies to maximize your edge in NFL survivor pools, also known as knockout pools or eliminator pools. We also provide some of the rationale behind picks potentially recommended by our product.
We plan to periodically update this post until Sunday of Week 11 arrives. Here’s what’s available now:
- 11/19: Week 11 Sunday AM Pick Overview
- 11/17: Friday Strategy Rundown: EV over Future Value
- 11/16: Commanders, Jaguars, and Texans
- 11/15: Dolphins Line Move Pushes EV Up
- 11/14: 5 Most Popular Week 11 Picks
- 11/14: Week 9 Recap
- FYI: Survivor Strategy Articles
- FYI: About Our Survivor Pool Advice
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Tuesday 11/14
Five Most Popular Week 11 Survivor Picks
Here are the most popular teams early on for Week 11 of the 2023 NFL season.
- Washington Commanders (24%) vs. New York Giants
- Detroit Lions (20%) vs. Chicago Bears
- Jacksonville Jaguars (13%) vs. Tennessee Titans
- Houston Texans (11%) vs. Arizona Cardinals
- San Francisco (9%) vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Here’s some quick analysis of these options.
Washington Commanders
Washington has fairly high win odds this week, though behind several other teams this week. Because there are other high win odds options with lower popularity, Washington has only moderate EV, but that is counteracted by their lack of future value.
Detroit Lions
The Lions are another team with high win odds, and moderately high popularity. They have a pretty good EV (with higher odds than the other three popular teams around them) and also more future value. The highest value week might be next week, when they host the Packers on Thanksgiving, but this is a pretty good week to use them as well.
Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jacksonville Jaguars are a little riskier than the first two options, and because of that have a lower EV. They do not have high future value, but for those in larger pools, the Week 17 matchup against Carolina at home looks fairly significant.
Houston Texans
The Houston Texans are only favored by four points, but they are a team that has been on a roll, and one that has not been used in survivor. Because of those lower win odds, though, they have a pretty poor EV. The future value is non-existent, so it’s a matter of whether you want to use a different team in the future (or this week) rather than Houston now.
San Francisco 49ers
The 49ers are the biggest favorite of the week right now, which means they have a really good EV at moderate popularity. San Francisco does have the highest future value of any option this week, so you do have to consider how your entry looks. They could be useful in most of the late weeks this year.
Tuesday 11/14
Week 10 Survivor Recap
Dallas was the most popular pick, and won handily against a hapless Giants team. But the Bengals lost at home to the Texans, becoming the first team to lose all year with over 30% pick popularity.
Here is a full summary of the most popular picks for Week 10, and the results:
| Team | Opponent | Popularity | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas | NY Giants | 44% | W 49-17 |
| Cincinnati | Houston | 31% | L 30-27 |
| Buffalo | Denver | 6% | L 24-22 |
| Pittsburgh | Green Bay | 5% | W 23-19 |
| Chicago | Carolina | 4% | W 16-13 |
| Baltimore | Cleveland | 3% | L 31-33 |
| Seattle | Washington | 2% | W 29-26 |
| New England | Indianapolis | 2% | L 10-6 |
Week 10 featured a lot of close games and some crazy endings, as 11 of the 14 games came down to one score. One that didn’t was that Dallas game, where the Cowboys put up over 600 yards on the Giants. Baltimore (blowing a big lead) and Buffalo (losing because they had 12 men on the field for a game-ending missed field goal, allowing Denver to re-kick) were among them.
Our recommendations were heavier than the public, and Seattle was our second-most common, followed by Buffalo and Baltimore.
For the public, around 56% of all entries advanced out of Week 10. For PoolGenius, about 82% of our pick recommendations advanced, with Dallas making up a substantial number of the advancing entries for both the public and PoolGenius.
FYI
About Our Survivor Pool Advice
We break down the pros and cons of various survivor pick options in this column, but none of our advice is ever absolute.
Why can’t we just tell you the “best” survivor pick of the week? Because there is no universal “best pick” for all NFL survivor pools.
The best weekly pick for your pool depends on a variety of factors, including the number of entries still alive and your pool’s rules. For example:
- Bigger survivor pools reward more risk-taking.
The more entries in your pool, the lower the chance you have to win it. In addition, you have a fixed number of weeks to send hundreds (or even thousands, in really big pools) of opponents to slaughter while you survive unscathed. As a result, your best strategy for bigger pools generally demands more of a focus on avoiding the most popular picks. - Non-standard rules change optimal pick strategy.
If your pool requires double picks late in the season, or if it’s a strike pool (i.e. your first incorrect pick doesn’t eliminate you), you don’t want to use the exact same pick strategy that you’d use in a standard-rules survivor pool. Those rule variations significantly influence decision factors, such as whether you should be more inclined to save a good team for later vs. use it now.
And then there’s all this stuff:
- What if you’ve already picked the team (or teams) that some article says is the best pick this week?
- What if the point spread for that “best pick” has gotten several points worse since the article was published?
- How should you spread your picks across multiple teams if you’re playing more than one entry?
Technology to the rescue
As far as we know, we’re the only site that has built algorithms that evaluate all of the strategy factors that matter in survivor pools and provide you with customized survivor pick recommendations based on the data updated multiple times a day.
The result? Since 2017, our subscribers have reported over $5.7 million in survivor pool winnings using our data-driven picks and tools.
If you want to see all the picks we recommend for your pool, use our NFL Survivor Picks product.
Why we write this column
At the same time, we know our subscribers like to understand the rationale behind picks the product may recommend, especially when those picks go against the grain. So, over the years, we’ve started to write more about the “whys” behind our approach.
This column can also help educate our readers about survivor pool strategy. We highlight tactics proven to result in more survivor pool wins over the long term and point out common pitfalls to avoid.
We hope you enjoy reading, and we encourage you to check out more of our survivor pool strategy articles.
Wednesday 11/15
Miami Line Move Pushes EV Up
The Miami Dolphins have moved to a 13.5-point favorite against Las Vegas, now the largest favorite of the week. With 88% win odds, the Dolphins have moved into another safety sphere. That, combined with both Washington and Detroit moving down a bit to -9, has resulted in a shift in EV, where the Dolphins are now 1.20 EV this week.
That’s a really high number, and the Dolphins should be moving up more in your pick recommendations if you have them available. Right now, they are making up 28% of pick recommendations but that could keep climbing if these numbers hold.
Thursday 11/16
Commanders, Jaguars, and Texans
The Commanders, Jaguars, and Texans are making up 54% of public picks as of today, so just over half of all entries are on one of them. They are the lower future value, and mostly available options, this week (Washington was popular all the way back in Week 1).
Overall, we are lighter on all of them than the public with only 23% of our current recommendations on one of those three. But of the three, we have the most recommendations out on Washington, with very few on Houston.
So we’ll do a comparison of the three.
Houston: riskiest of the three, favored by 5 points; no future value; lowest EV
Jacksonville: favored by 7; remaining future value is late, Week 17 vs. Carolina, EV now just above Washington
Washington: highest win odds, favored by 9; no future value; below average EV
Houston is the lowest of those, ranking below the other two in overall safety, overall EV, and no better than Washington in terms of future (and arguably more likely to emerge in future weeks, since we do have them as a near pick’em right now in several).
The case between Washington and Jacksonville is more debatable. Washington has higher win odds, but is rising in popularity, and thus lowering the EV. Jacksonville is less popular relatively, but also potentially useful if you get to Week 17 and want a big favorite against Carolina. It may ultimately depend on just how popular Washington gets, as we have seen that number rise from 24% to 30% since Tuesday.
Friday 11/17
Friday Strategy Rundown: EV Over Future Value
The over-arching theme of Week 11 is using up some top teams at excellent EVs to play against the “no future value” and riskier but more available choices. Our entries have used plenty of the top teams to get to this point, but relatively speaking, have more of some of these EV options than the average public entry.
Miami at #1, Plus San Francisco, Dallas, Detroit, Buffalo
Miami is our most common highest graded team. They have the highest win odds, moderate popularity, and an excellent EV. And while they are nice to have for the next few weeks, they also aren’t likely to have 88% win odds in the future, which is the second-highest we have seen (behind only Dallas last week).
San Francisco, Dallas, Detroit and Buffalo are other high-usage teams in the past who are favored by a touchdown or more. Collectively, we have 80% of our pick recommendations on of those five teams, compared to the public being at 40%, so we are twice as heavy across the entire group. Obviously, individual entries will vary based on who is available.
Fading the Highly Available, Low Future Value Teams
So if we are at 80% on those teams, double the public, who are we fading? Nearly everyone else. In Thursday’s note, we discussed Washington, Jacksonville, and Houston. About 56% of all public picks are on one of those three teams, while they are making up 19% of our recommendations. Most of those are on Washington, where the Commanders are coming in at about half of their public pick average.
Other than a handful of picks in some multi-pick pools that require two picks this week, we are almost entirely off Houston right now.
Sunday 11/19
Week 11 Sunday AM Pick Overview
Here’s where things stand as of Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. ET, comparing public picking trends to the percentage of picks we’re recommending to PoolGenius subscribers (the “PoolGenius” column).
The last six columns in the table show how our recommended picks vary by subscriber pool format/rules. The table shows every team with at least 2% public popularity and/or is drawing at least one recommendation from PoolGenius to one of your pool entries.
| Team | Public | PoolGenius | Standard | Strike | Rebuy | Multi-Pick | Playoffs | LateStart |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami | 7.3% | 26.5% | 8.9% | 21.3% | 22.5% | 28.4% | 35.6% | 37.0% |
| San Francisco | 9.5% | 19.6% | 16.8% | 16.3% | 18.1% | 21.1% | 3.1% | 21.5% |
| Detroit | 16.5% | 17.9% | 31.9% | 22.9% | 22.3% | 13.6% | 10.6% | 10.9% |
| Washington | 31.2% | 14.5% | 25.0% | 17.5% | 14.2% | 14.1% | 26.3% | 8.6% |
| Dallas | 4.7% | 12.3% | 8.0% | 7.1% | 8.0% | 12.6% | 10.6% | 15.8% |
| Buffalo | 1.7% | 4.6% | 3.1% | 5.8% | 5.4% | 5.2% | 8.1% | 5.3% |
| Jacksonville | 17.0% | 4.0% | 6.3% | 7.9% | 6.0% | 3.7% | 5.6% | 0.9% |
| Cleveland | 0.2% | 10.0% | 0.0% | 0.8% | 1.8% | 0.9% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| LA Chargers | 1.6% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.8% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Baltimore | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.3% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Denver | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Entries can fall under more than one category. For example, a pool that requires multiple picks in future weeks and also allows a strike would be separately included in the percentages for each.
The outlook is mostly what we detailed in the Friday rundown. Miami and San Francisco are the most common recommendations as the two highest EV plays this week. Detroit’s win odds have rebounded slightly, and that has been enough to push them up a bit since Friday (and part of that is also because they are almost entirely available to our entries so far, so they are more commonly available as an alternative as the grade rises slightly).
We have some Washington, but at a little less than half the public usage, and are light on Jacksonville and Houston.
Week 11 Expectations
It’s another fairly high survival rate expectation week, with so many teams favored by more than a touchdown. The popularity is also somewhat spread out. For the public, the expected advancement is 77%, while for PG recommendations, it is at about 83%, thanks to the higher percentage of selections on the two biggest favorites and highest EV plays in Miami and San Francisco.