🏈 The Lone Survivor

📢 Fore, Please:

As most of you know, I am not going to pretend that I’m grinding All-22 film at 2:00 AM trying to figure out whether the Jaguars’ left guard can handle a certain defensive front.

That’s not really my thing. But — solving a problem is my thing! And NFL Survivor is a really, really good problem.

This is one of two yearly emails that I send that are not golf related, with March Madness being the other. Below you’re going to find strategy around three pillars, contests to play, and a way to split entries with me in the $21M Survivor on Splash this year.

There are also two offers from our longtime partners — PoolGenius and Splash Sports. They are the best offers they’ve ever made available. That comes from our sustained relationship between the RRG community and these sites. I’m proud of what we’ve all accomplished.

Let’s dive in.

✏️ Make A Plan, Stan!

The game is called “Survivor”. That implies you need to be the last one standing. Not the second to last, or 50th to last, or 100th to last. There is no prize for making it to week 8 and then being eliminated. You suffer the same fate as those who went out in week 1.

Yet — it feels different! It makes you FEEL better to last until week 10. It validates your time and effort. I hate to tell you this, but your feelings do not matter. But it’s these feelings that literally change the strategy for many people who a) use their best teams too soon and 2) view this is a weekly game.

This is not a weekly game! This is a season-long game where you’re going to have to be perfect every week. Your weekly selections should reflect that larger goal.

The truth is that you are almost certainly going to get eliminated at some point. Even if you have an 80% win probability every single week (you don’t), the chances of you surviving three weeks is 51.2%. The chances of you surviving ten weeks is 10.7%. The chances of you surviving 18 weeks is 1.8% and that doesn’t even include weeks with double-picks.

I’m not saying this to scare you, I’m just trying to set expectations that you need to be perfect. So squeezing out small percentages over 18 weeks is critical and having a view for the entire year makes that way easier.

The season plan is just a plan. There are going to be a million factors like injuries and teams over/under performing that will change future weeks. So the real advice is have a plan, but re-evaluate it every week.

📈Link To Discount: https://bit.ly/47ccEmB

🔮 Look Into The Future

I’m cheating a little bit because this pillar goes hand-in-hand with Season Planning. You will face two big questions every week:

1) What team should I use?
2) Should I use this team or save them?

Future value helps answer both, but specifically the second.

Every team is an asset and once you use that asset, it’s gone. I know this intimately from golf One & Done — using Scottie Scheffler at Riviera (doh!)

So the cost of selecting a team today isn’t simply the probability that they lose today, there is also an opportunity cost. Let’s use the Rams as an example.

Their projected Week 1 win probability against San Francisco is only around 65%. That’s solid but look ahead. They are currently projected to have a ton of games where they are 65+% to win including 90% in week 6 against Arizona, 75% in week 7 against Vegas, and 83% when they play Arizona again in week 10.

PoolGenius has a “Future Value” score on their data grid and the Rams are the highest FV team on the slate because they are going to have so many good spots throughout the year.

Buffalo is another interesting example. Some of their most attractive projected Survivor spots don’t arrive until much later — including an 87% projection against Miami in Week 11 and 84% against the Jets in Week 18.

I personally have a great relationship with PoolGenius and use their tools for golf One & Done as well as March Madness. They are giving the RickRunGood community a discount up to 60%. Can’t beat that.

📈Link To Discount: https://bit.ly/47ccEmB

 💪 Leverage Is The Magic Word

You are not playing against the NFL, you are playing against everyone else in your Survivor pool. Again, there’s no difference for being the last one standing in week 18 or the last one standing in week 9. You just need to be the last one standing.

The size of your pool matters a ton here. Like — a ton! Whatever the most I could explain and then some. The difference between 50 people and 50,000 people literally changes your entire gameplan.

There are going to be a lot of situations where you should weigh the likelihood of a team advancing against the number of other managers who are going to select that team.

Let’s use the current Week 1 numbers.

PoolGenius currently has:

Los Angeles Chargers
80% win probability
35% projected popularity

Detroit Lions
74% win probability
16% projected popularity

Jacksonville Jaguars
73% win probability
23% projected popularity

Las Vegas Raiders
65% win probability
7% projected popularity

If our only goal was surviving this week, Los Angeles would be the easy answer

Imagine a 100-entry pool and roughly 35 people select the Chargers and you select the Lions. If both teams win, great. Everyone moves along. But if the Chargers lose and the Lions win, you just knocked out 35% of the league. Your relative share of the pool just increased by roughly 54% in one afternoon.

That is leverage. You paid for it though. You paid about six percentage points of immediate win probability — Detroit at 74% instead of Los Angeles at 80%. In return you received the benefit of a large increase in your entry’s EV if things fall your way.

Let me remind you what can happen very early in the season. Look back to 2024 —

Cincinnati was the most popular Survivor selection in Week 1 and lost outright to New England, wiping out about 34% of Circa Survivor entries.

The following week, Baltimore became the most popular selection at roughly 31% and lost to Las Vegas.

Then Week 3 arrived and four of the five most-selected teams lost. Across ESPN’s Eliminator Challenge, 77.2% of the remaining entries were eliminated in that week alone. After three weeks, only 5.5% of ESPN entries remained alive. In the $14.266 million Circa contest, approximately 95.5% of entries had already been eliminated.

THREE WEEKS!

🤔 Week 1 Drama

Let’s drill into Week 1 and see if we can get off on the right foot. There are currently nine teams that are 64% or better to win in week 1.

We can remove the Ravens and Rams immediately. They have too much future value to waste in Week 1 when one is on the road and the other is in Australia.

We can probably also rule out the Lions and Seahawks thanks to their future value considerations. Down to five.

The Chargers will be the most popular (35%) but they could also be valuable immediately in Week 2 OR later in the year (11, 14, 16). No real reason to be with 1/3rd of the entire world. Down to four.

Jacksonville, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Cincinnati are all very playable in my eyes. If you chose any one of these teams, I would be fine with it.

If you want to nitpick, Jacksonville is gaining a lot of steam and will be roughly 25% owned which is maybe too much to consider with three other teams in the mix.

If we believe that Philadelphia (65%), Vegas (65%) and Cincy (64%) all have basically the same chances of winning then we should probably just take the least popular team — Cincy.

In practice, I will probably use all three and I really like that Vegas will probably have ZERO future value. Though — it does feel a little trappy.

🐋 Whale of a Time

Last year, Splash Sports set the bar by giving the RickRunGood community a $1.25M One & Done. It was, and still is, the largest golf one & done on the internet. They put their money where their mouth is.

Well — they did it again. They have a (gulp) $21,000,000 guaranteed Survivor which is not only the largest in the world but can also be played online in over 40 states and most of Canada. No more flying to Vegas to enter. No more proxies. Just do it from your phone.

To celebrate, they have given me tons of offers and I’ve matched theirs as well.

New Users — use code RUNGOOD at sign-up and receive 10% back on your entries in the $21M and $3M contests. That means the $1,000 buy-in becomes $900 and the $100 buy-in becomes $90.

All Users — I am SPLITTING my $1,000 entries with you! I have three entries and I am going to pick users to share with. This is a function within Splash, so I will add you to the entry. Could you imagine splitting $21M? I could! This is my offer personally as a thank you. Visit my YouTube video and comment with your Splash username.

The Survivor World Championship
🔗 Join Link: https://bit.ly/4gwjzNX
💵 $1,000/entry
💰 $21,000,000 Guaranteed
🎙️ Hosted by Splash Sports
📝 The Largest Survivor in the World

The Big Splash
🔗 Join Link: https://bit.ly/4zRA6U8
💵 $100/entry
💰 $3,000,000 Guaranteed
🎙️ Hosted by Splash Sports
📝 More Affordable Option

RickRunGood NFL Survivor 2026
🔗 Join Link: https://bit.ly/4gKj7uu
💵 $50/entry
💰 $50,000 Prize if filled
🎙️ Hosted by RickRunGood
📝 Our Official Listener League

🫵 You Matter The Most

Awww, that’s sweet. But it’s true. All of the information in the world does not help you if you use it incorrectly. The decisions you have to make are completely reliant on your league. The difference between a 50 person Survivor and a 5,000 person Survivor is the difference between Scottie Scheffler’s golf game and mine.

Depending on the number of opponents, specific rules, payout structure and a million other things — your best options are completely unique to you.

This is the biggest advantage to the PoolGenius tool. Before you are given any information, you’ll enter the specifics of your league. If you have multiple entries, you can tell the tool. And you’ll repeat this for every league you’re in.

That way your weekly recommendations and information is customized and specific to you.