For the gluttons for punishment who willingly subject themselves to the hair-pulling anxiety of NFL survivor pools, the brand new 2020 NFL season means that it is officially time to get nervous about your Week 1 NFL survivor pick.

As sharp players know, winning an NFL survivor pool does take some luck, but there’s a lot of strategies involved in making smart survivor picks that maximize your edge in the long run. (For a more in-depth explanation of the elements of winning survivor strategy, see our 2020 survivor strategy primer.)

In this post, after quickly reviewing the key metrics you should use to evaluate potential survivor picks, we break down the pros and cons of the five most popular picks of NFL Week 1.

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The Elements Of Smart Survivor Pick Analysis

When making survivor pool picks, less skilled players tend to place too much importance on one metric, the chance a team has to win. That’s shortsighted. In a vacuum, making the safest picks possible is good, but the optimal pick strategy is more complicated than that.

To win a survivor pool, at some point, you need to make a pick that wins, while the rest of your opponents make different picks than you, and their choices all lose. So to maximize your odds to win a survivor pool, you also have to identify and seize the best opportunities to differentiate your picks from the crowd.

Finally, if you’re in a survivor pool of 175 to 200 entries or more, you should expect to have to survive all 17 weeks to win (or split the pot with some other winners). Even small pools can last deep into the second half of the season. As a result, understanding the value of saving a particular team for use later in the season is critical.

In summary, intelligent analysis of any potential NFL survivor pick involves not just one metric but three:

• Win Odds
• Pick Popularity
• Future Value

There are still more factors that impact optimal pick strategy, such as the rules and size of your survivor pool, but we’ll cut it off there for now. (Again, read the survivor strategy primer for more.)

Week 1 NFL Survivor Pick Analysis

Below we analyze the five most popular NFL Week 1 survivor picks in pools nationwide by considering win odds, pick popularity, and future value.

Can we tell you the absolute best Week 1 pick for your survivor pool without knowing more about it? No, and don’t believe anyone who says they can. Factors like your pool’s size and rules (e.g., one strike allowed, double picks required late in the season, etc.) can significantly alter the calculus.

(However, you can hop over to our NFL Survivor Picks product, tell us a few things about your pool, and get our customized pick recommendations.)

Without further ado, we begin our analysis with the reigning world champions of NFL football.

Note: Data referenced below was current as of Monday morning, September 7, and could change between posting time and kickoff time. Our product updates multiple times per day with the latest information.

Kansas City (vs. Houston Texans)

Survivor Pool Pick Popularity: 16% (#1)
Point Spread: -9.5

If it seems like the Chiefs, with 16% of survivor entries nationwide picking them, aren’t that popular for the most popular survivor pick of the week, well, you’re right. You will sometimes see weeks late in a season where there is no clear most popular survivor pick, but that’s because by that point, most still-surviving entries in pools have already used most of the good teams. Before this week, the last week before Thanksgiving in which there was no team with a pick popularity above 20% was Week 4 of 2015!

Of course, there’s a reason. Kansas City starts as the largest favorite of Week 1, but the reigning Super Bowl champs also have the most future value of any NFL team right now. There are 10 other weeks in the 2020 season where we project the Chiefs to have win odds of 70% or higher, making them a tremendous asset to keep available in your quiver. We project Kansas City to have higher win odds than this week in four future weeks. That includes a stretch in Week 8 and Week 9 when they host the Jets and Panthers back-to-back and should be heavy favorites in both games.

So the decision to use Kansas City this week primarily comes down to deciding whether it’s better to save them for a hopefully more advantageous situation later in the year. It’s not cut and dry, though, since the Chiefs’ profile as the safest team of the week that is also not wildly overpicked is a rare combination this early and delivers some immediate term expected value.

Baltimore Ravens (vs. Cleveland Browns)

Pick Popularity: 16% (#2)
Point Spread: -8

Baltimore is right there with Kansas City in terms of pick popularity, and what we just said about Kansas City also mostly applies to Baltimore. The Ravens had a dominant 2019 season with Lamar Jackson at quarterback and are expected to pick right up and be a top contender in2020.

The Ravens have the second-highest future value of any team, and Kansas City and Baltimore are both pretty far in front of all other NFL teams in terms of the number of future weeks in which they look like a potentially strong survivor pick. We project Baltimore as having the highest win odds in five future weeks on the 2020 schedule.

So just as with Kansas City, you have to weigh whether there are other reasonable alternatives to allow you to save Baltimore for a future week. They look like a pretty good option in Weeks 4 and 5 when they play at Washington and host Cincinnati if you do not use them this week.

Buffalo Bills (vs. New York Jets)

Pick Popularity: 16% (#3)
Point Spread: -6.5

Buffalo, as a 6.5-point favorite at home against the Jets, offers a little less safety than the Chiefs or Ravens. The counterpoint is that Buffalo has far less future value, which is a big plus.

Buffalo was a sneaky survivor play in several weeks last year thanks to a soft schedule, which was a factor in Buffalo finishing 10-6 and making the playoffs as a wildcard. The Bills’ 2020 schedule, though, is more balanced and gets a lot tougher after their opener. Other than potentially a Week 17 matchup at home against Miami, Week 1 looks like one of the choicest spots to use Buffalo this year.

The Bills’ pick popularity is moderately high, but not prohibitive given their win odds. However, you are taking a step up in elimination risk compared to the Chiefs or Ravens. So when it comes to the Bills’ decision, it is taking a little more risk now, to be in better shape for future weeks.

Indianapolis Colts (at Jacksonville Jaguars)

Pick Popularity: 14% (#4)
Point Spread: -7.5

The Colts are the third-largest favorite of the week (safer than Buffalo), drawing a Jacksonville team that appears to be in full rebuilding mode in the opener. It will also be Philip Rivers‘ first game at quarterback for Indianapolis. The Colts are the early betting favorites to win the AFC South. Jacksonville looks like they could be a popular team to pick against in survivor pools this season.

Indianapolis’ pick popularity has been climbing over the last week, going from 12% on Friday, September 4, to 14% by Monday, September 7. They still have the fourth-highest of any team in Week 1.

The Colts have a favorable schedule in 2020, which partly explains heightened expectations for them. In fact, our deeper analysis of their schedule using Vegas season win totals shows that they have the easiest schedule entering 2020. As a result, their future value is higher than Buffalo but far less than Kansas City or Baltimore. They also have some possible near-term use cases in both Week 3 (vs. the Jets) and in Week 6 (vs. Cincinnati).

San Francisco 49ers (vs. Arizona Cardinals)

Pick Popularity: 11% (#5)
Point Spread: -7

San Francisco is the fifth most popular survivor pick among the public this week. Last year’s NFC champions have the third-highest future value in survivor pools this year, behind only Kansas City and Baltimore.

The 49ers are a reasonable pick option in several weeks in 2020, and look like the safest play in both Week 5 (vs. Miami) and Week 14 (vs. Washington). In terms of relative safety, San Francisco’s win odds are just slightly ahead of Buffalo’s, putting the Bills, Colts, and 49ers in a similar win odds cluster.

When you’ve got two alternatives (the Bills and Colts) that are similarly safe and also reasonably close in pick popularity, it makes for a more challenging case for burning San Francisco’s future value this early.

“The Field” Of Picks Is Big In Week 1

The five teams above are the most popular picks this week, but that doesn’t necessarily mean one of them is the best pick for your pool. They only account for a total of around 70% of all public picks.

With nearly 30% of the public’s picks scattered across additional teams, Week 1 could give rise to some under-the-radar sleeper picks that make sense for certain types of pools. Every possible pick has an expected value and future value associated with it, and those values vary based on the specific characteristics of your pool.

In addition, with pick popularity numbers for the most popular teams so closely bunched together this week, even slight changes in public picking trends over the week could impact the best teams for you – especially if you’re playing multiple entries and composing a “portfolio” of picks across a few different teams.

Get Our Week 1 Survivor Pick For Your Pool

Figuring out the best picks for your NFL survivor pool each week isn’t easy. It takes a lot of data and math to quantify the various pros and cons of each possible option, and then feel confident that you’ve made the smartest choices. Not to mention that a late-week shift in a team’s win odds or pick popularity always threatens to derail your initial conclusions.

As geeky engineer types, we built technology to solve the complexity of survivor pool pick optimization. Our NFL Survivor Picks product does all the data collection and number crunching necessary to identify the best weekly picks for many popular types of survivor pools.

It even updates multiple times per day to adjust for the latest data, and provides pick recommendations for portfolios of up to 30 different entries (e.g., “3 Chiefs, 2 Bills, 2 Colts”).

The result? Over the past three seasons, our subscribers have won over three times the prize money as expected in survivor pools, given the size of their pools.

We invite you to try it out for free:

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