The 49ers host Miami on Sunday, and Pinnacle has them at -1025. Take out the book's cut and that is 88%, the biggest number anyone will post before Thanksgiving. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of every survivor pool in the country is already on it, depending on whose count you trust.
Last week three teams sat within a few points of each other and the argument was which one to spend. This week there is one team, nine points clear of the next, and the argument is whether to stand in line with a quarter of your pool.
Lines are as of Thursday, September 17. Where one book is quoted, it is named. Pick percentages come from published projections and are attributed where quoted. Probabilities past week 3 rest on thin early lines. Read them as estimates, not prices.
What week 1 did to the field
The Chargers were the biggest favorite of week 1. Pinnacle closed them at -475 over Arizona, and DraftKings and FanDuel had them shorter still. Call it an 80% favorite. Arizona won 26-14.
They were also the most popular pick anywhere anyone counted. Yahoo had them on a third of its survival entries. ESPN says the loss knocked out a fifth of its field. At Circa, where an entry costs $1,000 and the pool was a record $25 million, the Chargers took out 7,585 of 25,017 entries by themselves. Add the Titans and a handful of others, and 8,032 were gone after one weekend.
Section 1 · Week 1
Where the Circa field went in week 1
The 25,017 entries in the 2026 Circa Survivor contest after week 1, as reported by Covers on September 14.
- 7,585
- Out on the Chargers
- 447
- Out on other picks
- ~7,100
- Alive on everything else
- 8,100+
- Alive on the Jaguars
- 1,771
- Alive on the Lions
We had the Chargers in a small pool and the Lions in a large one. The Chargers lost by twelve. The Lions gave back a 21-point lead, went to overtime, and survived when New Orleans failed a two-point conversion. An 80% favorite loses one time in five. This was the one.
Four favorites lost in week 1 and only one of them mattered, because of who was holding it. When a pick that a third of the pool shares goes down, the survivors wake up Monday owning a third more of the same prize. When a pick that 200 people share goes down, nothing changes for anyone else. That is the whole reason pick popularity matters, and it is why everyone who took Jacksonville is in a better spot today than they were on Saturday without having done anything different.
Pools are about a third smaller. The survivors are mostly on Jacksonville. And the most popular pick this week is priced well above where the Chargers were.
The board, as the market prices it
The ten biggest favorites this week, with the consensus line, Pinnacle's own line, the blended win probability, how many books stand behind it, and the best game each team has left. That last column is there because a team you use this week is gone for the season. The real cost of a pick is the game you give up.
| Matchup | Consensus | Pinnacle | Win | Books | Best later week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 49ers vs Dolphins | -998 | -1025 | 87% | 46 | 85%, wk 9 vs Raiders |
| Buccaneers vs Browns | -395 | -407 | 78% | 46 | 64%, wk 12 vs Panthers |
| Ravens vs Saints | -389 | -400 | 78% | 46 | 87%, wk 16 vs Browns |
| Rams vs Giants, Monday | -313 | -326 | 74% | 44 | 75%, wk 6 vs Cardinals |
| Eagles at Titans | -327 | -331 | 74% | 46 | 69%, wk 6 vs Panthers |
| Chargers vs Raiders | -283 | -293 | 72% | 46 | 72%, wk 16 at Dolphins |
| Chiefs vs Colts, Sunday night | -293 | -288 | 72% | 44 | 81%, wk 9 vs Jets |
| Bills vs Lions, Thursday | -233 | -236 | 69% | 45 | 88%, wk 11 vs Dolphins |
| Patriots vs Steelers | -228 | -237 | 68% | 46 | 81%, wk 18 vs Dolphins |
| Bears vs Vikings | -202 | -215 | 65% | 46 | 78%, wk 14 vs Dolphins |
Below the Bears it thins out fast. Dallas over Washington, Seattle at Arizona with a backup quarterback, Green Bay at the Jets, all in the low 60s, and three games under 60%.
Two gaps matter. Nine points from the 49ers to the Buccaneers, and four from the Ravens to the Rams and Eagles. The first is why this is the 49ers' week. The second looks like it should settle the third choice, and it doesn't. Of the three teams at 78% or better, only Tampa has no better game later. Both teams at 74% are playing their best week right now. That is the difference between a team you use and a team you save.
What moved since Sunday
On Sunday morning these sixteen games were priced by a few dozen books each. By Thursday the board was full, and the lines that moved most moved on injury news.
Section 3 · Line movement
Four days of injury reports
Consensus win probability on Sunday morning, September 14, and Thursday afternoon, September 17. Carolina was the underdog on Sunday and is the favorite now.
Buffalo.The Bills play tonight, and Detroit has ruled out right tackle Blake Miller (knee) and left guard Christian Mahogany (hip), with cornerback D.J. Reed questionable with a foot injury. Pinnacle moved the Bills to -236 for the first game at the new Highmark Stadium. That is a solid favorite and still not a survivor number, and Buffalo has an 88% game against Miami waiting in week 11.
Watch it. Don't use it.
Carolina.Tua Tagovailoa missed week 1 with an oblique injury and has not practiced this week. Cooper Rush had back spasms over the weekend and has been a full participant both days. Michael Penix Jr. is cleared after his ACL surgery, took first-team reps Thursday, and says the knee decides the date. Kevin Stefanski said Wednesday he is not ruling anybody out, third-stringer Jack Strand included. The market read all of that as about five points for the Panthers. Neither team is a survivor pick.
Seattle.Sam Darnold is out with a glute injury he took on a sack five snaps into the opener, and Mike Macdonald said he does not expect to put him on injured reserve. Drew Lock starts at Arizona. Lock went 16 of 22 for 187 yards in relief last week, and Pinnacle still dropped the Seahawks to -198 against the team that just beat the Chargers. Is Seattle the team that held New England to ten points, or the team starting Drew Lock? The market says a little of both, and Seattle has a 74% home game against Arizona in week 9. Hold them.
Chicago.Kyler Murray is in the concussion protocol after a hit from Javon Bullard in the Vikings' win over Green Bay. He was limited Wednesday, and Kevin O'Connell said he has to clear by Friday. If he doesn't, Carson Wentz makes his 100th career start at Soldier Field. The Bears drifted from 68% to 65% anyway. At either number, this is the kind of pick that ends seasons.
Three more that touch the board without moving it much. Ladd McConkey did not practice Wednesday and is day-to-day, and the Chargers slipped a couple of points against the Raiders. Myles Garrett had arthroscopic knee surgery and is on injured reserve until at least week 6, and Sean McVay has not said whether Aaron Donald plays Monday night; the Rams slipped a couple of points too. Joe Burrow has back tightness, was limited Wednesday and back on the field Thursday, and says he expects to play at Houston, where the Bengals are the underdog and not part of this decision.
The 49ers question
San Francisco hosts Miami on Sunday, and Pinnacle has the 49ers at -1025. DraftKings and FanDuel are close behind, and no book on the game is shorter than -833. RotoWire calls the 49ers the safest team on the week 2 board. ESPN's Mackenzie Kraemer has them first in her survivor power rankings and calls it the most lopsided matchup on paper all season. PoolGenius adds the sentence that starts the argument: this is the last time the 49ers are projected above 80% for the rest of the year.
You use a team once. If the 49ers have an 88% game now and an 85% game in November, using them now means November gets filled by whatever is left, and whatever is left will be worse. That is future value: a team with a better game later is a team you pay extra to use now.
By that test the week has three teams worth using and two worth holding. The 49ers' best later games are the Raiders in week 9, Arizona in week 3, and Denver in week 4, all somewhere between the high 70s and the mid 80s. Good weeks. None of them this good, so using San Francisco now costs two or three points. Tampa and the Rams have nothing better coming at all. The Eagles' best week is this one. Baltimore and Kansas City are the ones with better games ahead, and every plan we ran holds them.
-
San Francisco 49ers SF
88% at Pinnacle, at home to a Dolphins team that lost to the Raiders by fourteen with Malik Willis making his first start for new head coach Jeff Hafley. Brock Purdy is not on the injury report. Nick Bosa missed Wednesday with tendinitis in his surgically repaired knee. Miami's best game on our board all season is 39%. That's Miami this year: the team everyone else uses. The only case against the 49ers is the company: a quarter to a third of every pool is on this pick.
-
Tampa Bay Buccaneers TB
77% at Pinnacle, at home to Cleveland, where Todd Monken has confirmed Deshaun Watson starts a second week over Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel. The Browns lost 34-10 at Jacksonville. Tampa's next-best game all season is Carolina in week 12 at 64%, and ESPN says the same thing another way: this is their largest favorite role all season on paper. Use them this week or accept that you never will. Roughly as popular as the 49ers in every projection.
-
Los Angeles Rams LAR
-326 at Pinnacle, 74%, at home to the Giants on Monday night. Myles Garrett is on injured reserve, Aaron Donald's status is undecided, and the Giants beat Dallas with Jaxson Dart starting. Is this the Rams team that lost 27-7 to San Francisco in Melbourne, or the one Pinnacle makes a three-to-one favorite at home? The market says the second. What makes them a pick rather than a bet is the schedule: their best later game is Arizona in week 6 at about the same price, so using them now costs nothing. The projections have them on one or two percent of entries. That's the Rams this week: the same price as the Eagles with a fraction of the crowd.
The Eagles belong in the same conversation and land a step behind. Pinnacle has Philadelphia at -331 at Tennessee, the same price as the Rams, against a Titans team that lost 23-10 to the Jets with Cam Ward throwing for 140 yards. Their best later game is Carolina in week 6 at 69%, so this is the week to use them if you ever will. Two things keep them behind the Rams. Landon Dickerson went on injured reserve this week, and Jalen Carter and Cooper DeJean did not practice Wednesday. And about an eighth of the crowd is already on them, six times the Rams' share for the same price.
Baltimore is the pick people will talk themselves into, so it gets a paragraph. Pinnacle has the Ravens at -400 at home to the Saints, the same price as Tampa. Zay Flowers has not practiced this week with a hamstring. And the schedule says wait: 85% at home to Tennessee in week 4 and 87% at home to Cleveland in week 16. That's Baltimore: the team whose best weeks are still coming. Hold them.
Section 4 · The cost of the pick
What each pick costs you later
Week 2 consensus win probability next to each team's best remaining game on our board. Later weeks are priced by far fewer books and should be read as estimates.
This week
44–46 books per game
Best later week
estimate
wk 9 vs LV
wk 12 vs CAR
wk 6 vs ARI
wk 6 vs CAR
wk 16 vs CLE
wk 9 vs NYJ
Tampa and the Eagles are use-it-or-lose-it. The Rams are a wash. The 49ers give up two points against the biggest number of the year. Baltimore and Kansas City give up nine, and that is why the Ravens, for all that 78% looks like, are not a week 2 pick.
Where the crowd is going
Nobody publishes pick data for your pool, so every count of the crowd is a projection, and this week the projections disagree on the order and agree on the shape. ESPN's own pools have the Buccaneers on 27% of entries and the 49ers on 23%. PoolGenius has it the other way around, 49ers 32% and Buccaneers 30%. SurvivorGrid splits the difference. Below the top two comes a long drop to the Eagles, and then the Ravens, Chargers and Chiefs in single digits. Half or more of every pool is on two teams, and one of them is a 78% favorite.
Section 5 · The crowd
Half the pool is on two teams
Week 2 survivor pick distribution across ESPN's public pools, as reported by ESPN on Thursday morning.
- 27%
- Buccaneers
- 23%
- 49ers
- 12%
- Eagles
- 3%
- Chargers
- 2%
- Chiefs
- 33%
- Everyone else
A Browns upset on Sunday afternoon removes a quarter or more of the pool in one game, and Pinnacle's price says that happens about one time in four or five. A Dolphins upset removes about as many entries, and Pinnacle says that happens about one time in eight. Both are big blocks of the pool. Only one is priced like a longshot.
Survivor analysts put a number on this and call it expected value. Your equity in a pool is your share of the prize if you survive, times your chance of surviving. A pick that wins less often can be worth more if fewer people are on it, and a pick that wins more often can be worth less if everyone is. It depends on the exact numbers, so we ran them. On our model of the crowd the 49ers carry the highest expected value of any week 2 pick despite being the most popular, because 88% is enough to outweigh the company. Tampa and Baltimore come next, then Kansas City, whose tiny following nearly makes up for a 72% price. That is one week's value on its own. It does not count what using Baltimore now costs in week 4 and week 16, and once the season plans in the next section count it, the Ravens drop out of every plan's week 2. When a third entry needs a team, it is the Rams that come in.
SurvivorGrid has the same top three: 49ers, Ravens, Rams. PoolGenius puts the Ravens a hair above the 49ers and recommends the Chargers as the leverage play, on the argument that you give up three points against Tampa and shed almost all of the crowd. Our model likes the Chargers less, and the disagreement is about the crowd, not the team: our model spreads the chalk across more teams than the published projections do, and if PoolGenius is right about how few entries are on the Chargers, the leverage is there.
Our model expects about a quarter of entries to go out this week, and SurvivorGrid agrees. After last week's 30%, a pool that started at 25,000 would be near 13,000 entering week 3.
What a full-season plan does with week 2
Everything above is one week. Our optimizer looks at all of them: every team's win probability in every remaining week, and the sequence of picks, one team per week and no team twice, that survives all eighteen most often. We run three versions. The full-season plan is that one. The greedy plan takes the best available team each week without looking ahead, which is what most people do by hand. The contrarian plan weighs each pick's popularity against its win probability and hunts for the sequence that wins the most pools rather than the one that survives the most weeks.
Last week's post offered three teams: the Chargers, the Lions, the Jaguars. If you followed it you are holding one of them, and the right week 2 pick depends on which. So we built four pools on the current board, one entry each, and ran every plan from where that entry stands.
If you took the Chargers.In a standard pool you are out, and the tool says so. It marks the entry eliminated in week 1 and plans nothing for it. If your contest allows a strike, a buyback, or a second entry, you are a fresh entry with every team available, and the last scenario below is yours. Nearly a third of Circa's field is in the same spot.
If you took the Lions.The one scenario where the plans split. Without Detroit's week 3 game against the Jets, the full-season plan needs another team there, and it takes Kansas City at Miami. That leaves week 9 without the Chiefs, so it saves the 49ers for the Raiders. The sequence: Tampa Bay now, the Chiefs in week 3, Minnesota over Miami in week 4, San Francisco in week 9. The greedy plan and the contrarian plan both take the 49ers now instead, and the gap between the two orderings is smaller than the error bar on any week 9 number. For a Lions holder I'm still on the 49ers, with Tampa as a perfectly defensible way to keep San Francisco for November.
If you took the Jaguars.Every plan opens with the 49ers. The full-season plan takes them now, then Detroit over the Jets in week 3, Minnesota over Miami in week 4, and Kansas City over the Jets in week 9. Jacksonville's absence costs almost nothing. Its next good game on our board is week 12.
If you have not used any of them.Same opening, and the most room to plan. The full-season plan takes the 49ers now, then the Lions, the Vikings, and the Chiefs in week 9, and survives all eighteen weeks in 1.7% of seasons at current prices. The greedy plan opens the same way and survives a little less often. So does the contrarian plan. A strategy built to avoid the crowd looked at a 30% pick at 88% and took it anyway, then went looking for its edge later, with the Giants over Tennessee in week 3 and Arizona in week 7. It survives the least often of the three and carries the highest equity.
If you have three entries.Our portfolio planner solves the entries together so they don't all die on one game, and on a fresh three-entry pool it opens with Tampa Bay, the 49ers, and the Rams. Not Baltimore, not Philadelphia. The Rams get the third seat because they cost nothing later and almost nobody is on them. The chance all three entries go out in week 2 is less than one in a hundred.
Section 6 · The plans
What each plan does over a full season
A fresh entry with no team used yet, planned from week 2 through week 18 on the current board, scored against a 45,000-entry pool. All three plans open with the 49ers.
Survives all 18 weeks
share of seasons, exact
Collects a payout
share of simulated seasons
Those numbers look small because eighteen straight weeks is hard. A full-season plan that gets through one season in sixty is a good one; a plan that picks a favorite at random survives so rarely it rounds to zero. Survival says the full-season plan. Equity says contrarian. Both say the 49ers this week.
What no plan does is use the Ravens, the Chiefs, or the Bills. Each has a better game coming, and the plan wants that game more than anything they add now.
The pick
Week 1 showed what an 80% favorite can do. Week 2 offers a bigger number, a smaller pool, and a crowd that has already paid for its concentration once.
Sunday. Miami at San Francisco.
Take the 49ers.
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