Week 5 Survivor Picks Strategy & Advice (2024)

Week 5 survivor pools look to some NFC West favorites in Seattle and San Francisco, in a difficult week with limited survivor pick options.

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith gets to face the team that didn't want him to replace Eli Manning (Steven King/Icon Sportswire)

The survivor casualties continue to mount in 2024, though for the first time all year, the most popular single team, and biggest favorite, San Francisco, won last week. Now, we push forward to Week 5, a week that looks pretty challenging, as we get our first bye weeks and fewer games. No team is favored by more than seven points as of Tuesday morning, and only three teams are favored by more than 3.5 points to start the week. We will cover all that and more as we hit on Week 5 Survivor Pool Picks strategy.

This post will be periodically updated through Sunday of Week 5. Here’s what’s available now:

10/6: Sunday AM Pick Overview, Week 5
10/4: Friday Week 5 Strategy Rundown
10/3: Watch for Line Shifts Among Similar Options
10/2: Jacksonville? Why?
10/1: Five Most Popular Survivor Picks
10/1: Week 4 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 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.

Sunday 10/6

Week 5 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 5 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.