Welcome to Betting Life’s NFL Survivor Series primer! I’ll be teaming up with our very own Gene Clemons right here, every Thursday for our thoughts, takes, and picks to help you outwit, outlast, and outplay the competition.

I really do love the immediacy of the survivor format packaged with insane weekly sweats where there are no mistakes allowed.  

Premium

Go FantasyLife+

Your league is unique. Your advice should be too. Get personalized tools, rankings, and projections tailored to your fantasy football league settings.

Learn More

Step 1: The Rules - Short And Sweet

To avoid the cardinal mistake of not defining terms for any beginners, the rules of Survivor are easy — don’t lose, or you’re out. Everyone must choose one team each week to win their game outright … but here’s the catch: Once selected, that team is no longer eligible for the remainder of the season.

Note that some tournaments do allow buy-ins for the first few weeks, in which case it’s easy—pick the worst team with even a sliver of a chance to win. Treat them as the multi-entry contests they are.

Think about it this way; anyone making a deep run against a large field with a chance to 500x their money would be more than willing to trade a single buy-in to burn a garbage team.

Step 2: The Basics - Who Do You Want To Be?

I don’t have a magic elixir, but I can say one thing with confidence—like most other risk ventures it’s important to be proactive rather than reactive. Decide what type of survivor player you’re going to be and follow through.

A few popular competing elements tend to smash up against each other in terms of the macro approach. The first is the natural instinct to survive at any cost, even if it means the “obvious” or “chalky” pick. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with picking the lowest-hanging fruit at times, it inherently plans on a long haul. If you’re going to move with the flock early, you’ll eventually have to diverge with a tough decision late.

A second archetype leans into the variance of the NFL, particularly during kickoff weekend when pertinent data points are scarce. They embrace the fact that “Any given Sunday” carries weight and legitimacy for a reason. Now, risk heightens fading the sheep but pigs eat while hogs get slaughtered.

Get it right and watch a massive chunk of the contest fall on the same sword, left in total disbelief at work on Monday. Get it wrong … and Bob with the stained shirt from accounting will be laughing at you for days.

A third style of player does their best Indiana Jones impression, mapping out the entire contest. While I truly respect the commitment, my dedication to chaos theory is too strong to assert accurately predicting the NFL so far out into the future. That said, I don’t mean to demean the approach—taking a broader look ahead at the schedule for potential landmines makes a ton of sense. In fact, I know our very own Coach Gene will be laying out his personal three-week plan when he jumps on board next week.

And then you have me, classic nerd and galaxy-brainer extraordinaire who tries to combine them all … 

Step 3: Get After It

I’ll sign off on one thing the chalk donkeys do get right—paying Las Vegas its respect and doing the math.

Remember, books can’t help but tip their hands with critical information when posting lines. Converting money line odds into implied probabilities will help visualize the field and streamline your attack (image below, home team CAPS).

After starting with the hard numbers, there are usually two more differentiators for me—home field and quarterback play.

I’d prefer to avoid playing on the road when possible for obvious reasons. As far as QB play, I’d argue it’s the only thing more important to me than the actual number itself. Identifying underdogs with better signal callers has always been my favorite way to find upsets in the first place.

So, the groundwork’s laid and hopefully a brushfire’s starting to burn upstairs—I’ll meet everyone right back here next week to lock in our first of what I hope is 18 picks on the road to glory.