Week 2 Survivor Picks Strategy & Advice (2024)

The Week 2 survivor pick options include several contenders, but who makes sense for balancing value and the future?

Isaiah Likely and the Ravens look to get both feet down in Week 2 (Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire)

Our first survivor week has passed, and now we move on to Overreaction Week in the NFL, where we all react to what we saw in just one game. It usually creates some value opportunities in survivor, and in this article we will explore how your pool is likely to pick, and how to exploit it for Week 2 survivor pools.

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 2 arrives. Here’s what’s available now:

9/15: Sunday AM Pick Overview
9/13: Strategy Rundown: Chargers Fade
9/12: Some Key Line Moves Shift Picks
9/11: Week 2 Survivor Strategy: Value Picks
9/10: Five Most Popular Survivor Picks
9/10: Week 1 Survivor Recap
FYI: Survivor Strategy Articles
FYI: About Our Survivor Pool Advice

Survivor Strategy Articles

If you’re serious about winning more survivor pools, it pays to learn the strategies that give you a long-term edge.

You can start with our free survivor strategy articles, which explain a number of the concepts we apply to our customized Survivor pick recommendations:

We also have written a survivor strategy e-book that goes more in-depth into a lot of key topics for Survivor, which you can download for free here.

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. These types of pools typically go deeper into the season, require more picks, and necessitate digging deeper into the teams by taking on more risk. As a result, your best strategy for bigger pools generally demands more of a focus on avoiding the most popular picks to try to benefit when the popular crowd pick falls flat.
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

We believe we’re the only site with algorithms that evaluate all key strategy factors in survivor pools. We provide customized Survivor pick recommendations that are updated multiple times a day.

The result? Since 2017, our subscribers have reported over $6.0 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

We know our subscribers want to understand the reasoning behind picks, especially when they go against the grain. This weekly article gives us a chance to explain the “why” behind our approach. It also allows us to detail unique situations as they arise.

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.

Sunday 9/15

Week 2 Sunday AM Pick Overview

Before we get started with the overview, this is a quick reminder that we will be having a live chat from 11:45 am to 12:30 pm ET as you get ready for the early afternoon Week 1 games.

Now, to where our pick recommendations stand as of Sunday at 7:30 am 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.