🏈 Picking The Pigskin

📢 Fore, Please…

The PGA TOUR is on it’s two-week hiatus which has allowed me to work on some projects that have been sitting on my “to-do” list. I’ll have some really cool updates in the near future that include new tools, improved membership experiences, and plans for 2026.

But for now, I’m going to take a break from that and act like a football expert for a few minutes.

The growth of golf one & done leagues has been shadowed by the growth of NFL Survivor contests. Now that these are being taken online, they are more accessible than ever. It’s creating a ton of really big prize pools across all contests and, of course, NFL is still the king.

I’m going to run through a few interesting things that I found doing my NFL Survivor Research for this year and show you the tools and contests to play.

Enjoy,
Ricky Pigskins

🐸 Simply Surviving Is Not Good Enough!

There are two types of people who play in Survivor Pools — 1) the person who only cares about surviving the next three days and 2) the person who only cares about surviving the next three months.

If I had to guess, I would say 80%+ fall into the first bucket and they significantly decrease their chances of winning a Survivor league. Picking the best team each week, without considering for future (value) weeks is a really good way to box yourself into a picking an underdog in Week 10.

The idea of future value is probably the most important thing you can consider to give yourself the best chance of being the last entry standing. Here’s a Week 1 example:

Philadelphia, Denver and Arizona are the three biggest favorites in Week 1, all giving up at least 6.5 points on the spread. They are the only three times with a 70%+ chance of winning their games but there are massive differences between deploying them in Week 1.

You should never (?) be using Philadelphia here. Sure, they are massive favorites but they are going to be significant favorites in every game they play this season. They have a ton of future value.

The Cardinals, on the other hand, are going to be useless almost immediately after the start of the season. Their Week 1 game against New Orleans is the game they are likely to be the biggest favorites in all year. They should also be favored in Week 2 and Week 5 but they would provide very little confidence after that. If you haven’t used Arizona in the first five weeks, you probably shouldn’t use them all year. They have very little future value.

Just as a point of comparison, the Broncos are basically in the middle of Philadelphia and Arizona when it comes to future value.

In an ideal world, every week you’d pick a team who is both a big favorite and has little future value.

🏅 It’s A Popularity Contest

As with any game theory league, what your opponents do matters a helluva lot. And sometimes it’s worth doing something that could be less likely to occur if you have leverage on the situation. This is a core principal of DFS, March Madness Brackets, O&D, etc.

As of right now, there are four teams that are garnering 10%+ of selections across the industry.

• Denver: 29%

• Washington: 15%

• Arizona: 15%

• Philadelphia: 12%

• Cincinnati: 9%

As mentioned above, the 12% that are picking Philadelphia are sitting in front of their screens with a big red nose. 🤡

Denver is capturing 2x as many picks as both Washington and Arizona — are they twice as good of a play?

Denver plays Tennessee and are currently 9 point favorites, the biggest on the board. Arizona and Washington are 6.5 and 6.0 favorites respectively, which makes the four most popular teams, the four biggest favorites of the week.

Both Arizona and Denver have very similar future values, with Arizona needing to be used early and Denver getting some favorable games from Weeks 6 to 10. So what’s the deal? Why is Denver so much more popular?

It appears the click percentages are coming from the fact that Arizona is on the road and Washington is playing a divisional game — both are reasons why many users are staying away. There have been years of “experts” saying you shouldn’t pick teams on the road and you shouldn’t pick divisional games despite there being no evidence to back this up.

In fact, PoolGenius ran the numbers on this and found that favorites of 5+ actually win 77.5% of their divisional games compared to 75.5% of their non-divisional games. You can read the whole article here.

The same goes for road teams — over the last decade, road favorites are winning 79.9% of games compared to the 75.2% of home favorites. Again, PoolGenius has busted this myth.

When considering all factors, Arizona and Washington both seem like excellent Week 1 options. Here are a few other observations:

🤡 Let’s Be Real — Expectations!

The big “E” word! It’s important in all aspects of life, especially Survivor leagues. Let’s be honest, you’re probably going to lose. I can’t think of a more volatile league to be in than one that requires you to flip coins each week on strong men in tight clothes playing outside with an oblong ball that only rewards the top finisher.

If you’re in a league with 20 people, you have a 5% chance of winning assuming that everyone has the same skill level. You could (and should!) go on a 19 year losing streak. Charlie Woods might be retired from professional golf by the time you win your small NFL Survivor League.

And the odds get even more drastic from there, considering that some of these leagues have thousands of entries. So what can we do?

1. Have fun. I use these leagues as a way to follow a sport that I normally don’t follow too closely. I also use it to flex my math muscles in a way that I don’t normally and to give my brain a little more exercise.

2. Play in smaller leagues — yes, it’s sexy to win $1,000,000 and beat out 18,000 entries but that’s probably not going to happen in this lifetime or many lifetimes.

3. Use tools that give you an edge. This is the no-brainer for me because I cannot name 10 starting QBs in the NFL — I’m certainly not going to be handicapping every game.

I can help with the last two bullet points.

🏈🦐 Smaller Leagues

We have a private league on Splash Sports that is limited to only 550 entries. It’s not listed in the lobby and the only way to get in is via this link. That means it’s only for the RickRunGood community and a bunch of randoms won’t be getting involved. As of right now the winner will earn something in the ballpark of $9,000 but that’s going up every hour. Please join us.

🔨⛏️The Tools

I’m not going to spend hours doing all this football research myself, but I don’t want to be uniformed. Enter — PoolGenius.

Most of you know, I love these guys. They’ve been in the space for 20+ years and have a foothold on the pool theory. I met with their founder, Tom, in Memphis a few weeks ago. We try to grab dinner anytime we are in the same town.

Not only did he treat me to a wonderful BBQ meal but we talked plenty of business. Him and I align on our business strategies and we just want to make cool stuff. They have really expanded their offerings this year and I support them anyway I can. And guess what, they support us too! I’ve got discounts on everything below:

🔨PoolGenius Survivor Tools: https://bit.ly/3Jykxvf
💰RRG Discount: https://bit.ly/47qK5Et

🤑 If You’re A Visual Learner

I did create a YouTube Video outlining my strategy for this year along wit the tools and contests. I also used ChatGPT to generate that thumbnail which is insane. I can’t believe how good AI is becoming. I’m terrified.

📺: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-NrfoQfSPg

Got a question for me? Reply to the email and I’ll get back to you…