NFL Week 4 2026 Post-Mortem: Don't Get Too Cute

Phew. A calm week at last. You may be bummed more of your competition didn't get sent packing, but let's just take this one moment of respite as a collective… we need it. And hey, you can still laugh at the people who took unnecessary risks on the Bills, Cardinals, Steelers or Lions.

As I mentioned last week, this was a don't-get-too-cute week. Most of the field agreed, and those who lost were likely playing the EV game and hoping for a continuation of the major upsets. We've been spoiled by some crazy weeks so far, but that is not the norm. Chaos works both ways, and sometimes, maybe even often, things go exactly how they should.

Week 4 · Circa Survivor

Most of the field didn't get cute

Where the 6,292 Circa Survivor entries alive entering Week 4 spent their pick.

5,182

5,182

Vikings or Ravens

442

Seahawks

161

Colts

187

Other winners

320

Eliminated

Baltimore and Minnesota

This was a week where only two picks felt great: the Ravens and the Vikings. Neither game seemed like much of an upset risk, and this was the best remaining slot to play either team for the rest of the season. Pinnacle had Baltimore at -735 against Tennessee and Minnesota at -555 against Miami, and nothing else on either team's schedule comes close. So you couldn't really go wrong with these picks.

The picks that went right

Before I get into the picks that went wrong, I want to spend a little more time on a couple of picks that went right. Seattle felt like a solid third choice to me, but the Colts were incredibly risky. Both of these games had a path to an upset, and frankly I don't view them much differently than the Patriots, Giants, Browns or Panthers upsets.

Seattle.I did have a little Seattle exposure this week, with the expectation that they'd come back angry from the upset loss to the Commanders the week prior. Still, I have a hard time picking against the Chargers, despite how awful they've been. The Chargers are certainly one of the league's worst teams (they're 0–4), but the talent and coaching still exist there. They can just as easily beat any team. These are the types of matchups I try to stay away from.

Indianapolis.The Colts game was riskier, since the Colts haven't been all that great either; they came in at 1–2. And those who thought a Jayden-less Commanders team would roll over were already shown the door last week. In my Week 3 post-mortem I noted that Mariota is prone to following up his good games with bad ones, but the Colts were fortunate to lose him to injury outright. He hurt his knee on a first-quarter sack, which forced in Washington's third-string quarterback, Athan Kaliakmanis, a seventh-round rookie out of Rutgers. That might have sealed the Commanders' fate, and we will never know whether Mariota could have led them to victory as he did just one week prior. But none of that information was available before kickoff.

The picks that went wrong

In the actual upset column, we had the Bills, Cardinals, Steelers and Lions all lose.

Week 4 · The favorites that fell

Four favorites, four very different bets

Each losing favorite's no-vig consensus win probability at kickoff, and the Circa Survivor entries that went down with it.

Win probability

consensus of 46 to 47 sportsbooks

Bills (lost to NE) 74%

Lions (lost at CAR) 64%

Steelers (lost at CLE) 57%

Cardinals (lost at NYG) 56%

Circa entries eliminated

out of 6,292 alive

Bills 178

Lions 13

Steelers 6

Cardinals 91

Buffalo.I think the Bills pick is particularly egregious given what was left on the board. You still have two Miami matchups, and if you're going to play a team in a divisional rivalry game, that's the divisional rivalry I'd rather chase. Sure, New England has been awful this season, but Drake Maye finished second in last year's MVP voting. He was likely to bounce back eventually, and he did, throwing the go-ahead touchdown to Efton Chism III with under two minutes left. I understand that the Bills are an excellent team, but that would make me want to save the Bills for the right matchup even more. This is the kind of decision you make deep in the season when you're trying to get over the finish line, not in Week 4.

Buffalo's season · Our board this week

Week 4 was the Bills' fifth-best spot

Buffalo's best remaining win probabilities on our board, alongside the Week 4 game they lost.

Miami Other division games The pick that lost

Win probability

Week 11 vs MIA 84%

Week 18 vs NYJ 79%

Week 17 at MIA 76%

Week 10 vs NYJ 74%

Week 4 vs NE 74%

Detroit.The Lions were less owned, but a much more egregious play. They haven't looked nearly as good as the Bills, and the Panthers have been much better than the Patriots. Nothing about this game felt safe; this was a full-fledged gamble.

Pittsburgh and Arizona.While the Lions and Bills were lessons in the opponent, the Steelers and Cardinals are more lessons in the pick itself. When can you trust a team to be your survivor pick? The answer is much less often for a team that is already bad. Neither is a team you'd want to pick, so the bar is much higher for finding a suitable matchup. The Browns have actually looked good since their disastrous opener, and the Giants are frankly in the same tier as the Cardinals.

Know your entries

These were very low-owned picks, and so I imagine these were purely contrarian doomsday-scenario picks. If you've got the entries to burn, maybe you can risk them for the upside of a week where the Ravens and Vikings both lose and more than 80% of the pool goes with them.

That's the final distinction to make here. You have to view the pool through the lens of your entries. If you've got limited entries, you can't be making these kinds of picks. The mass multi-entry players, on the other hand, get a lot of upside when they make a 1%-owned pick like that.

So for most of us out there with limited entries, this feels like another week to hit those favorites.