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.

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:

• 9/29: Week 4 Sunday AM Pick Overview
• 9/27: Friday Rundown: Purdy and the Jets
• 9/26: Cowboys Kick Off Week 4 Survivor
• 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.

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Sunday 9/29

Week 4 Sunday AM Pick Overview

We will have another live chat from 11:45 am to 12:30 pm ET today as you get ready for the early afternoon Week 4 games and submit your picks before the Sunday deadline.

Here’s how our customized subscriber pick recommendations stand as of Sunday at 8:30 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.