NFL Week 7 2026 Survivor Picks

The Texans host the Giants on Sunday, and Pinnacle has them at -476. Take out the book's cut and that is 80%, the only number on the week 7 board above 72%. Houston is 2-4 and has not won a home game.

Circa Survivor started the season with 25,017 entries. It has 1,277 left, and Circa's own count says only 671 of them still have the Texans. The best team on the board is the one half of the survivors already spent in week 5.

Lines are as of Thursday morning, October 22. Where one book is quoted, it is named. Pick percentages come from published sources and are attributed where quoted. Probabilities past week 8 rest on thin early lines. Read them as estimates, not prices.

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1 The board, as the market prices it

The ten biggest favorites this week, with the consensus line, Pinnacle's line, the blended win probability, how many books stand behind it, and the best game each team has left. Buffalo, Jacksonville, the Chargers and Washington are on bye. New England at Chicago kicks off tonight and is not on the list.

One team in the 80s, one in the low 70s, and then four teams inside two points of each other in the mid 60s.

Look at the last column. Houston, Minnesota and the Jets have nothing better coming. Denver, the Rams, Dallas, Detroit and San Francisco all do, most of them by double digits. The week sorts itself before anyone argues about the crowd.

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2 What moved since Monday

The board opened on Monday with the Rams and the 49ers in the mix behind Houston. Three days of injury reports took both of them out of it.

Section 2 · Line movement

Three days of injury reports

Consensus win probability on Monday morning, October 19, and Thursday morning, October 22.

October 19 October 22

HOU

80% 79%

MIN

71% 69%

LAR

66% 68%

SF

58% 67%

PIT

62% 56%

50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 win probability, %

San Francisco.Nine 49ers missed Wednesday's practice, among them Nick Bosa with a calf, Mike Evans with Achilles tendinitis and Deebo Samuel with a hamstring. The 49ers are 6-0. The market took nine points off them in three days anyway, and it hardly matters for Circa, where only 107 live entries still have them.

Los Angeles.Sean McVay said Monday that Myles Garrett's practice window will not open this week, so the edge rusher who has been on injured reserve since knee surgery after week 1 misses Las Vegas too. Blake Grupe, the Rams' new kicker, hurt his knee making a tackle in the first quarter against Arizona. The Rams have played four straight one-score games, lost three of them, and are 2-4. The market moved away from them, not toward.

Then the Giants named their quarterback.

Houston.John Harbaugh announced Wednesday that J.J. McCarthy starts at Houston, with Jameis Winston behind him. Jaxson Dart has been out for the season since week 2 with a knee injury. McCarthy came on in relief against New Orleans last week and threw for 243 yards on 11 completions. The line moved toward the Texans after the announcement, not away.

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3 The Houston question

Houston hosts the Giants on Sunday at -476 at Pinnacle. The Texans have lost all three of their home games, to Buffalo, Cincinnati and Dallas, and won their last two, both on the road.

You use a team once. A team with a better game later costs you that game when you spend it now. That is future value, and this week it points the same way as the price.

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  Houston Texans HOU

  80% at Pinnacle, at home to a 3-2-1 team on its third quarterback of the season. Their best game left on our board is Tennessee in week 18, at about the same number, and week 18 is the one where a team with nothing to play for rests its starters. Wednesday's report had seven Texans out of practice, linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, safeties Jalen Pitre and Reed Blankenship, and running back David Montgomery among them; Will Anderson Jr. and Nico Collins were limited for rest, and C.J. Stroud was not on it. Is Houston the team that is winless at home, or the team that has won two straight? Pinnacle says the second. SurvivorGrid has about a quarter of its entries here.

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  Minnesota Vikings MIN

  71% at Pinnacle, at home, 5-0, against a Colts team that blew a 13-0 halftime lead last week to a Titans team that hadn't won a game. Their best later game is Washington in week 16 at the same price. That's Minnesota this week: no future value to protect and no reason to wait. SurvivorGrid has a little under a fifth of its entries on them.

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  New York Jets NYJ

  67% at Pinnacle, at home to a Dolphins team that is 0-5 and lost De'Von Achane for the season to a torn ACL. The Jets' best game the rest of the way is the rematch in Miami in week 12, which our board has well under 60%. This is the only week the Jets are a survivor pick. About an eighth of SurvivorGrid is aboard.

Denver at Arizona prices with the Jets and is the trap of the week. The Broncos have Miami at home in week 13 in the low 80s, and a pick spent on a road game against the team that just beat the Rams costs you that one. Dallas is the same shape: a Monday night road game in Philadelphia now, the Giants at home in week 17 later. The Rams have the Chargers next week at better than three in four.

Section 3 · The cost of the pick

What each pick costs you later

Week 7 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

44–47 books per game

Texans 80%

Vikings 71%

Jets 67%

Broncos 66%

Rams 66%

Cowboys 65%

Best later week

estimate

Texans 80%

wk 18 vs TEN

Vikings 71%

wk 16 vs WAS

Jets 58%

wk 12 at MIA

Broncos 83%

wk 13 vs MIA

Rams 76%

wk 8 vs LAC

Cowboys 79%

wk 17 vs NYG

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4 Where the crowd is going

SurvivorGrid has 24.5% on Houston, 17.9% on Minnesota, 13.0% on Denver and 12.1% on the Jets. Houston is the most popular pick in the country, and no team holds anything like the half of the pool Dallas carried two weeks ago.

At Circa the question is not who people want. It is who they have left.

Section 4 · The crowd

The public wants Houston. Circa can't all have it.

Share of public survivor entries on each team this week, and share of Circa Survivor's 1,277 live entries that have not used the team yet.

Public pick share

SurvivorGrid, October 22

Texans 24.5%

Vikings 17.9%

Broncos 13.0%

Jets 12.1%

Cowboys 3.9%

Rams 2.6%

Still available at Circa

of 1,277 live entries

Texans 671

Vikings 745

Broncos 1,256

Jets 1,261

Cowboys 1,260

Rams 1,233

That is why pick popularity matters. Your equity in a pool is your share of the prize if you survive, times your chance of surviving. When a team a quarter of the pool shares loses, everyone else wakes up owning a third more of the same prize. Houston loses this game about one time in five. In Circa, where the Texans can only ever hold half the room, a Houston loss is a smaller swing than it would be anywhere else, and the Jets and Broncos are the teams the rest of the room can actually reach.

Our model of the crowd spreads the top four evenly, about a quarter each. The published counts tilt harder toward Houston than that. Either way the plan built to win the pool rather than to outlast it does not fade the Texans: at 80% against a field in the 60s, Houston is not chalk to run from. It is the only price on the board.

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5 What a full-season plan does with week 7

Our optimizer looks at every team's win probability in every remaining week and finds the sequence of picks, one team per week and no team twice, that survives to week 18 most often. The full-season plan is that sequence. The greedy plan takes the best available team each week without looking ahead. The contrarian plan weighs each pick's popularity against its win probability and hunts for the sequence that wins the most pools.

We ran all three for an entry with every team still available, the position of anyone starting a second-chance contest this week, against a field the size of what is left of Circa.

All three open with Houston. The full-season plan then takes Cincinnati over Tennessee in week 8, the Chiefs over the Jets in week 9, the Colts over Miami in week 10 and Buffalo over Miami in week 11, and saves Denver for its week 13 Miami game. It survives to week 18 about one season in nine. The contrarian plan opens the same way, survives a little less often, and carries the higher equity.

To see what the alternatives cost, we fixed each week 7 pick and let the full-season plan fill in everything after it.

Section 5 · The plans

Houston, then everyone else

Chance an entry with every team available survives from week 7 through week 18 on the current board, with the week 7 pick fixed and every later week planned by the full-season optimizer.

Survives to week 18

Texans 10.9%

Vikings 9.7%

Jets 9.1%

Rams 8.9%

Cowboys 8.8%

Steelers 8.4%

Broncos 8.4%

Panthers 8.2%

49ers 7.1%

Those numbers look small because twelve more weeks is a long way. The order is the point. Houston is more than a point clear of Minnesota, and Minnesota is more than half a point clear of the pack. Denver, priced level with the Jets this week, finishes near the bottom, because spending the Broncos here costs the plan its week 13.

If you have used Houston.Half of Circa has, and the answer is the next row down. Minnesota at home, nothing better later, and a crowd a little smaller than Houston's.

If you have three entries.Our portfolio planner solves the entries together so they don't all die on one game. Given three entries with every team available, it plays Houston, Minnesota and the Rams. The chance all three go out this week is about one in fifty.

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The pick

Houston has not won at home all season. Pinnacle still has it as the surest thing on the slate.

Sunday. Giants at Houston.

Take the Texans.