NFL Survivor: Week 7

Last week:
Washington: L, 19-17
Minnesota: W, 12-10
New Orleans: W, 34-3
Philadelphia: W, 40-26
Chicago: L, 22-20

Pretty absurd- over the last four weeks, the blog's picks are 4-0, having won by a grand total of 17 points. Thanks to losses by the Redskins, Bears, and Giants, 55% of the ESPN contestants were eliminated in Week 6, and we're now down to 10,116. If 56.7% are eliminated each week from here on out, there will be just one entry left after Week 17.

Teams used (LVSC rank): Philly (8), Tampa (11), NY Giants (T1), Jacksonville (7), Dallas (13, without Romo), Minnesota (15).

Best five teams left: San Diego (T1), Pittsburgh (3), Indianapolis (T4), Washington (T4), Tennessee (6).

Here are this week's most popular ESPN selections:

Two of the top three are out the window, having already used the Giants and Cowboys.

Tennessee (LVSC #6, @Kansas City)

Despite being on the road, the Titans are favored by nine, and the action is pretty much split. We try to avoid road teams, but this is a pretty good spot; future possibilities for the Titans are when they play @Detroit in Week 13, and host the Browns the next week.

Pittsburgh (LVSC #3, @Cincinnati)

A surprisingly large spread (PIT -9.5), even with the Steelers coming off a bye. The Bengals aren't good, but the two teams' respective LVSC ranks would indicate a line closer to seven. It's not like the linesmakers don't know that though, and Cincinnati is, not surprisingly, a pretty public dog. These teams play in Pittsburgh five weeks from now, so that will obviously be a much better option.

Houston (LVSC #23, vs. Detroit)

How bad are the Lions? They're getting 9.5 points against the Texans, who aren't one of the 20 best teams in the league. If you're in a very deep pool--like one where you have to take multiple teams towards the end of the year--then this is probably the way to go.

NY Jets (LVSC #18, @ Oakland)
San Diego (LVSC #1, @ Buffalo)

These are just such bad ideas, I'm not even going to bother. The Jets are favored by three, and are absurdly public; the Chargers are favored by one whole point. No.

Washington (LVSC #4, vs. Cleveland)

A lot changes in a week, huh. If this game was played seven days ago, the Redskins would've been favored by 10; this week, they're laying just seven points. The LVSC numbers still indicate a spread of 9.8 however, and the majority of the action is coming in on the Browns, so it's pretty clear that this line was significantly influenced by last week's events. The Redskins travel to Detroit next week; if they beat Cleveland, that line is bound to be higher than this one.

Every week, I have no idea who I'm going to take when I start writing this post, and have convinced myself of one team by the end. That's not true this week. It comes down to the Texans and Redskins.

There should be five lines of over a TD next week - PHI v. ATL, WAS @ DET, NE v. STL, NYJ v. KC, and JAX v. CLE. I've already used Philly and Jacksonville. But the Patriots and Jets will both be decent options, so not having Washington next week wouldn't be the end of the world. They have a pretty tough schedule after that until the last few weeks, when they play @CIN and @SF. Those are good, but not great spots.

I keep coming back to the fact that the Texans aren't nearly as good as the Redskins, but I need to stop doing that, because it just doesn't matter. Washington is currently -9 (+111) at Pinnacle (it's changed since I wrote their blurb last night; after considering the juice, the difference between 7 and 9 is significant, but not huge), while the Texans are -9.5 (-106). With neither team being particularly public at all, there's no reason to think Houston doesn't have a better chance of winning on Sunday. Since the Redskins are also significantly more valuable to me going forward, I'm going with the Texans.