NFL Survivor Pool Picks for Week 4: Strategy, Safest Bets, and Upsets
The 2021 NFL season is in full-swing once again, which means that eliminator, survivor, and pick’em pools are on many people’s minds. This fall, we will be offering some advice and best practices for how to approach each of these formats.
There are quite a few heavy favorites on the board for Week 4. We’ve already looked at Week 4 odds, now let’s break down our best NFL survivor picks.
Read more: Week 4 Pick’em Pool Picks
NFL Week 4 Survivor Picks, Strategy
Traditionally, survivor pools require participants to simply pick the winner of one NFL game straight up each week. The challenging part of eliminator tournaments is that you can only use a team once during the season. In 2021, this means that you will need to select 18 of the 32 teams to finish the regular season, so there will be weeks during which you will not be able to have an elite roster at your disposal.
In Week 1, we said that it made sense to burn an elite team, the Los Angeles Rams, to start off the year with a victory. We successfully burned another elite team in Week 2—the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In Week 3, we used a less notable team—the Denver Broncos in an extremely favorable matchup at home against a rookie quarterback. In Week 4, we will look to take advantage of another team with a favorable matchup at home against an inexperienced signal caller.
Week 4 Survivor Pick: Buffalo Bills
Since 2003, NFL teams favored by 15 points or more on the spread are 63-3 straight up, which translates to a .955 winning percentage. Thus, if you have the Bills available to use this week in your survivor pool, save yourself the cognitive labor of exploring other games, and lock-in Buffalo as your selection to get you to Week 5.
Last week, Josh Allen torched the Washington Football Team for 358 yards and four touchdowns through the air. Bettors should expect the Bills passing unit to victimize arguably the worst secondary in the league in Week 4. Vernon Hargreaves III somehow looks worse and worse every week as Houston’s top cornerback. Stefon Diggs could be in for a monster performance in this one. It also does not help that the Texans will be starting Davis Mills at quarterback again on Sunday, who looked completely overmatched in a 24-9 loss to the Carolina Panthers, throwing for only 168 yards and posting a 57.7 QBR. It is not often that there is this large of a mismatch in the NFL. Take advantage of these opportunities when they present themselves.
Safest Picks
If playing in a survivor pool with no constraints on picking the same team multiple times throughout the course of the season, participants have far more options to consider on a weekly basis. In Week 4, the biggest favorites include the Buffalo Bills (-16.5), Green Bay Packers (-7.5), New Orleans Saints (-7.5) and the Cincinnati Bengals (-7.5). Let’s take a closer look at each contest.
Packers (vs. Steelers)
We discussed above why we love the Bills this week, so let’s next dig into how we feel about the Packers. Aaron Rodgers deserves an apology from everyone who declared the Packers overrated after Green Bay was embarrassed by the Saints in Week 1. He responded with a surgical performance against the hapless Detroit Lions, completing 22-of-27 passes for 255 yards and four touchdowns. Against the San Francisco 49ers, he would have had his second consecutive game with better than a 70 percent completion rate if not for a necessary spike to stop the clock for the game-winning field goal on the final drive. The Packers secondary still gets amnesia from time to time, forgetting how to tackle in the open field. However, the Green Bay defense draws an incredibly favorable matchup in Week 4 against Ben Roethlisberger, whose time as Pittsburgh’s starting quarterback is unquestionably drawing to a close after yet another horrendous performance in Week 3 against the Cincinnati Bengals. Expect Green Bay to win comfortably on Sunday.
Saints (vs. Giants)
New Orleans opened the fall slate of action with a dominant 38-3 victory against the Green Bay Packers, prompting many pundits to declare Jameis Winston the missing piece that the Saints needed to win a Super Bowl. Those same overreaction-ists immediately jumped off of the bandwagon when Winston looked awful in an ugly 26-7 loss to the Panthers in Week 2. However, it was evident to anyone that watched that game that New Orleans sorely missed their eight assistant coaches, who were absent from the contest due to a COVID-19 outbreak. We discussed prior to their matchup against the Patriots that there was an irresponsible market overreaction to their loss against Carolina, and then the Saints delivered a comfortable 28-13 victory in Foxborough in a game that was never in doubt. This weekend, New Orleans gets to play one of the worst teams in the NFL—the New York Giants, at the Superdome. The Saints are a very safe option in survivor pools for Week 4.
Upset Watch
Each week, we will examine one team that is a heavy favorite and discuss why they could be a slightly more risky option than the other teams that people are considering in their survivor and eliminator pools. Last week, we identified the eight-point favorite Baltimore Ravens as being on upset alert. It took a 4th and 19 conversion on the final drive and an NFL record 66-yard field goal as time expired for them to avoid a loss to the underdog Detroit Lions. Stay away from these stressful situations when you can help it.
Bengals (vs. Jaguars)
As a general rule, it is best to avoid five contexts when considering options for a survivor league:
1. Intra-division games
2. Prime Time games
3. Away teams with poor defenses
4. Non-elite teams playing on a short week
5. Non-elite teams with a rest disadvantage
On Thursday night, the Bengals get flagged twice as a Week 4 survivor option, considering that the game is on a short week (both teams played on Sunday), and will be played on national television. Cincinnati has wins against two bad football teams in 2021, beating the Minnesota Vikings and the Steelers. The Bengals have also lost to a very bad football team this season, the Chicago Bears, who were out-gained by the Cleveland Browns 418-47 in Week 3. Jacksonville has looked like the worst team in the league so far this fall, but they are not incapable of pulling an upset on a short week against Joe Burrow—a quarterback who has struggled to take care of the ball in the early part of this season. There are better options to consider for NFL survivor pools when it comes to your Week 4 picks.
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