Week 4 Survivor Picks Strategy & Advice (2024)
Survivor pools have been wiped out after yet another crazy week. We dig through the rubble to look for your Week 4 Survivor Picks.
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jauan Jennings was one surprise of last week, in a week full of them (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire)
If you are in a strike or buy-back pool, welcome back to our Week 4 NFL Survivor Picks article.
The 2024 season has been an absolute bloodbath. We’ll get into more of the details in our weekly recap, but the four most popular picks lost, further wiping out survivor pools. The typical survivor pool is at around 5% of all entries still alive after just three weeks, if it has no special rules like strikes or buybacks. That changes the dynamics of the rest of the season, and future value, in a lot of pools as we head to Week 4.
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 4 arrives. Here’s what’s available now:
- 9/26: Cowboys Kick Off Week 4 Survivor Slate
- 9/25: 2024: Fading Popular Picks Runs Bad
- 9/24: Five Most Popular Survivor Picks
- 9/24: Week 3 Survivor Recap
- FYI: Survivor Strategy Articles
- FYI: About Our Survivor Pool Advice
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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:
- Don’t just try to survive the week
- The “Holy Trinity” of survivor strategy
- Expected Value: What it is, why it matters
- Future value: What it is, why it matters
- Why pool size should influence your picks
- How Survivor pool rules affect strategy
- Playing multiple entries in survivor pools
We also have written a survivor strategy e-book that goes more in-depth into many 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 tell you the “best” survivor pick of the week? Because there is no universal “best pick” across the board for NFL survivor pools.
The best weekly pick for your pool depends on various 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.
Thursday 9/26
Cowboys Kick Off Week 4 Survivor Slate
For the second week in a row, we get a survivor-relevant game on Thursday night to start the week. Last week, it was the Jets, who as it turned out were the most popular pick to win, as the four above them all lost later in the week.
This time around, we get Dallas as a 5.5-point road favorite at the Giants, as the third-most popular survivor pick so far at 14%.
Please update your picks to see if and where Dallas might be recommended for each of your entries.
Wednesday 9/25
2024: When Correctly Fading the Most Popular Picks Still Runs Bad
If you had told us before the season began that the most popular survivor pick would lose in each of the first three weeks, we would have signed up for that in an instant. That likely meant a massive edge on the public, and a low public survival rate.
Well, part of that is true, we have set a historic mark for the elimination rate through three weeks. Only about 6% of all Week 1 entries are still alive without a loss as we head to Week 4. That means that if you have gotten an entry this far, you have already achieved close to a top-five percentile outcome in your pool. More typically, it would take surviving to the start of Week 10 to reach that kind of outcome.
Only a relatively small number of our own recommendations have gone out on those results (about 15% with the Week 1 Cincinnati loss, 9% with Baltimore loss in Week 2, and virtually zero with Tampa Bay’s loss).
But things have run just about as poorly as possible in the other games. We avoided the major pileup, only to get hit by a secondary driver who wasn’t paying attention to what had just happened.
Favorite results, by spread, through Week 3, 2024
| Category | W | L | Expected Wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most popular | 0 | 3 | 2.2 |
| -6 or more | 5 | 6 | 7.8 |
| -5 to -5.5 | 1 | 1 | 1.3 |
| -4 to -5.5 | 6 | 2 | 5.2 |
| -3 to -3.5 | 8 | 2 | 5.5 |
| -2 to -2.5 | 4 | 4 | 4.4 |
| -1 to -1.5 | 4 | 1 | 2.6 |
Yes, the most popular picks have notably underperformed, going winless. But the other teams favored by six or more points have also majorly underperformed.
Altogether, teams favored by six or more points are 6-10 this year. That’s abysmal. The others who weren’t the most popular pick of the week also have a losing record.
Meanwhile, the teams favored by 3.5 points or less have outperformed expectations. These are typically the favorites that are too risky to rely on as consistent picks in survivor pools, and you will not generally be successful over time always picking these teams. It would have been the “armchair QB” way of getting through in 2024 though.
Here’s a slightly different way of looking at it, by how teams have performed based on Expected Value:
Team results, by Expected Value, through Week 3, 2024
| Expected Value | W | L | Expected Wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.10 or better | 3 | 4 | 5.0 |
| 1.05 to 1.09 | 5 | 1 | 4.1 |
| 1.00 to 1.04 | 3 | 3 | 4.1 |
| 0.95 to 0.99 | 4 | 3 | 4.5 |
| 0.90 to 0.94 | 5 | 4 | 5.4 |
| 0.85 to 0.89 | 3 | 2 | 2.9 |
| 0.80 to 0.84 | 4 | 4 | 4.1 |
Those top EV plays do not include the most popular picks. They also underperformed expectations by two wins. Detroit (Week 2) was the highest EV of the year so far, and our most common recommendation that week.
Overall Summary of Where We Stand
If you played in survivor pools after three weeks, and are now out entirely, we get the frustration. This happens to be an extreme year where eliminations everywhere have been high. If you switched from our recommendations to others, you most likely ran into losses elsewhere. With four of the five teams who have had public popularity over 15% so far losing, there have been a lot of “obvious” plays that lost. With teams favored by six or more points going 6-10 overall, most of the common survivor options have lost. It was just a lot harder to dodge losses this year.
Our position is always that we play our opponents to win the pool, and every year can be different. In some years, the outcomes that play out require advancing deep into the season and surviving a lot more games to have a chance to win. We also talk repeatedly about expectations, and how this is a high-risk, high-reward game. Whether we are in a year with heavy early eliminations or most people survive the first month, we are still in a game where the odds to ultimately prevail are typically small.
This happens to be a year where nearly everyone has lost most of their entries early. Pools are decimated. Some pools are already done, as plenty of smaller pools probably had picks spread across the four most popular picks last week with what was left, only for all to lose.
It has been a particularly frustrating year for us because the conditions involving popular picks failing are often what allows our subscribers to gain an edge when those weeks hit. It’s just that this year, almost every counter pick has also lost in those same weeks. We are a lot closer to a big season if Detroit or Cincinnati had made a few key plays late in the last two weeks, but it didn’t happen. The one subset of survivor picks that has worked are smaller, risky favorites with win odds under 65%, the type of picks that make some sense to mix in at small amounts but is typically not the basket you want to put all your eggs in.
Now, for the good news.
For those who have entries remaining, there is now an opportunity. Your entries that have survived have substantially higher expected value than they did just a few weeks ago. Your chances of winning with any remaining entry are now on the order of 20 times greater than three weeks ago.
Plenty of pools that started with 200 or fewer entries are down to the end-game already. Pools that almost certainly were targeted for the final weeks are now in play to end much earlier. Pools requiring multiple picks late may not even get there.
Properly evaluating these strategy shifts is a strength of our product. Adjusting our projections on teams with the new information of the first three weeks is one of the big value adds. Our future value measures also adjust to pool dynamics, and the likelihood of needing a certain number of picks or needing to have a pick available in late weeks.
We will be here with you to try to get the ones that are left through to the prize. Good luck!
Tuesday 9/24
Five Most Popular Week 4 Survivor Picks
Here are the most popular teams early on for Week 4 of the 2024 NFL season.
- San Francisco 49ers (36%) vs. New England Patriots
- New York Jets (15%) vs. Denver Broncos
- Dallas Cowboys (13%) at New York Giants (THU)
- Houston Texans (7%) vs. Jacksonville Jaguars
- Cincinnati Bengals (7%) at Carolina Panthers
We will have more analysis posted by 3 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Let’s quickly hit what to consider for this week:
San Francisco 49ers
The 49ers are the most popular pick, and also the biggest favorite of the week. We’ve seen each of the three biggest favorites lose in the first three weeks, but the 49ers are the first one favored by more than 10 points (so far).
This actually becomes the 49ers’ highest win odds projection of the year, though they do still have future value (that value did drop down to sixth in our rankings, though).
As a result, they do make some sense as eliminations have drastically reduced the likelihood of a lot of pools getting deeper into the season, if you are willing to take the most popular side.
New York Jets
The Jets’ popularity could vary quite a bit based on individual pools. They were likely heavily picked by surviving entries last week, as the most popular team to win, in a Week 3 that saw the four more popular options all lose. So use your individual pool availability as a guide on how popular the Jets could become. (On average, we would project about 42% of entries to have used them last week to get through, plus a smaller number who used them in Week 2 and are still alive.)
At the average public pick rate right now of 15%, they have a good EV. The Jets do have some future value, with lots of upcoming weeks that could be good spots. Of course, they likely look like better spots if we know that the Jets took care of business this week.
Houston Texans
The Texans have moved up to a seven-point favorite against Jacksonville. We could see this popularity number continue to move up, which would impact EV. Right now, the EV is good as they have solid win odds over 70%. The future value is also fairly low. The only other spot we project them at 70%+ win odds is Week 12 vs. Tennessee, a week that now looks like it might not even matter in small survivor pools.
Dallas Cowboys and Cincinnati Bengals
The Cowboys and Bengals are both coming off losses again, and both need to win on the road this week. They have a similar EV this week, with the Cowboys’ higher popularity offsetting slightly higher win odds. Both have some future value, but it’s largely tied up in later weeks that are far less certain now.
Both are options to consider, but also carry more risk than the three other popular options this week, lowering their EV below 1.00 as a result.
Tuesday 9/24
Week 3 Survivor Recap
We did it, folks. We got the lowest rate of survival going back to 2010. We have a summary of survival rates by week for the last decade here if you want to compare.
Based on our public pick data, we would estimate that about 6% of all public entries that began in Week 1 are alive after three weeks (excluding entries that are alive via strikes or rebuys).
That surpasses 2015 (8.4%) as the lowest cumulative survival rate through three weeks.
Not only that, but …
- It’s already the lowest survival rate through four weeks, even if 100% of picks advance;
- Only one year (2015 again) has a lower cumulative survival rate through five weeks, if there are somehow no more eliminations for two weeks;
- The current survival rate of 6% is lower than the average cumulative survival rate after Week 9 in our historic data.
We started off the year with the most popular pick losing in Week 1. Then, Week 2 gave us not only the most popular pick losing again, but also three of the six most popular picks getting knocked out. And then, well, here’s Week 3: