Week 6 survivor pick: Throw your head back and shout
If you've run a survivor pool, you know the most shockingly annoying part: when someone picks the same team twice. The comptroller of the pool shouldn't have to monitor entrants breaking the lone rule - use each team once - since the entrant should be able to keep track of the handful of teams they've used.
While picking a different team provides the construct for the strategy in the contest, the loophole is that we're always allowed to fade the same squad as many times as we like. Given that you have to select 18 different teams throughout a season, it often becomes less about taking a good team and more about pinpointing who's headed for a three-win season.
Early on, you think fading the Rams, Texans, Buccaneers, and Cardinals might be a good idea. In the regular-season win total market, they were the four worst-rated teams at six wins or fewer. That group has won eight of 19 games this season, knocking out more than a few entrants who thought they would be easy pickings.
If we could do it again, there's a group lined between seven and eight wins that would've been better targeted. The Bears, Giants, Patriots, and Panthers are a collective 3-17.
The argument for "playing it safe" - as we've done by taking teams with higher win totals in Path B - is it's easier to rely on who's going to be good early in the season versus what team is going to be a mess and worthy of being picked on. Five weeks in, we now pivot to fading the bad teams. Though to survive Week 6, we'll blend the two poles.
Every week until we get knocked out, we've mapped two paths to make it to the end of the season undefeated. As long as one of our entries still stands, we'll use the moneylines for our picks to show the odds of making it the distance traveled along the path. Once we're out, though, we're out.
We could provide a series of theoretical rules to follow - like never take a road team - but the moneyline reflects a club's likelihood of winning each game. We can easily translate that into an implied win probability, listed in descending order in the chart below.
Week 6 moneylines
| TEAM | MONEYLINE | IMPLIED PROB. |
|---|---|---|
| Bills | -1000 | 90.9% |
| Dolphins | -900 | 90.0% |
| Chiefs | -600 | 85.7% |
| Eagles | -280 | 73.7% |
| Rams | -280 | 73.7% |
| 49ers | -225 | 69.2% |
| Jaguars | -210 | 67.7% |
| Ravens | -185 | 64.9% |
| Lions | -175 | 63.6% |
| Raiders | -165 | 62.3% |
| Bengals | -155 | 60.8% |
| Vikings | -145 | 59.2% |
| Falcons | -135 | 57.4% |
| Cowboys | -130 | 56.5% |
| Saints | -120 | 54.5% |
| Texans | +100 | 50.0% |
| Chargers | +110 | 47.6% |
| Commanders | +115 | 46.5% |
| Bears | +125 | 44.4% |
| Seahawks | +135 | 42.6% |
| Patriots | +140 | 41.7% |
| Buccaneers | +150 | 40.0% |
| Titans | +155 | 39.2% |
| Colts | +175 | 36.4% |
| Browns | +190 | 34.5% |
| Jets | +230 | 30.3% |
| Cardinals | +230 | 30.3% |
| Broncos | +450 | 18.2% |
| Panthers | +600 | 14.3% |
| Giants | +700 | 12.5% |
Survivor Path A
Knocked out in Week 3. Thanks, Ravens. In an effort to make us feel better, Baltimore similarly coughed up a winnable game last weekend in Pittsburgh. That's a shame.
Survivor Path B
| WEEK | TEAM USED | IMPLIED PROB. |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Falcons | 64.9% |
| 2 | Cowboys | 80.0% |
| 3 | Chiefs | 88.9% |
| 4 | 49ers | 90.9% |
| 5 | Lions | 81.0% |
| SURVIVAL PROBABILITY | 34.0% |
We let it slip last week that the Dolphins would be the play this week because of a desire to keep fading the Panthers. However, while they're obviously a solid choice, two things have become clearer every week this season.
The first is that Miami is really good. That's not exactly breaking news, but the Phins' burgeoning quality increases the number of situations where they can be used later in the season. For example, a home game in two weeks against the Patriots has gone from an intriguing divisional battle that would be lined under a touchdown to one with a point spread closer to double digits.
Although the Patriots have been a surprising trainwreck this year, the Giants - coming off a playoff berth last season - are more shocking as a terrible team. Their matchup against the Bills being a Sunday nighter shows that more was expected from them.
Like any other high-quality team, there are other matchups where you could use Buffalo (Buccaneers, Broncos, Jets, Patriots). However, the defensive injuries are piling up for the Bills, and they're one or two away from those games getting a lot dicier. The Giants - potentially starting Tyrod Taylor - are so bad that the Bills' current depth chart is more than enough to get a home win in prime time.
Pick: Bills
Matt Russell is the lead betting analyst for theScore. If there's a bad beat to be had, Matt will find it. Find him on social media @mrussauthentic.