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Over the past few years, we have given the subscribers of Footballguys.com some help in playing office pools, one of the most popular methods to follow the NFL aside from fantasy football leagues. For the past few seasons, both Dave Larkin and I have written the “For The Win” column where Dave attempts to pick each and every NFL game against the Las Vegas spread. This has been a very popular feature, so this year Footballguys once again is presenting the Eliminator Challenge, where staffers have to pick a team to win each week. Just one? That sounds easy, but here is the catch – you can only pick the team you choose in a given week once all season long. Many contests and pools out there get pretty big, so an Eliminator (or Survivor) Pool can go 16 or 17 weeks.

Jeff Pasquino has provided some insight into this kind of contest previously with a preseason strategy article, which describes this kind of contest along with some advice on how to pick a team each week:

Survivor Pool Strategy

This pool will run all season long, but to keep participation up, the pool will crown the staffer with the best W-L record for the season (which means that everyone in the pool will continue to make picks every week).

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS

Most of the staff survived last week, as many were on the Rams (13 of 22), Ravens (3), or Buccaneers (2). Only Tampa provided much of a scare here, so nearly everyone rested easy in Week 4 - except for Sean Settle, who tripped up along with Dallas, as the Cowboys were run all over by the Cleveland Browns. That puts the staff at a combined 51-15 for the year (77.3% win percentage), and 14 staffers are still perfect on the young season. Week 5 is the first week with scheduled byes (not counting last week's Tennessee-Pittsburgh postponement), so Green Bay and Detroit are off the table. Once again the level of difficulty will increase, so let's take a look and see what NFL Week 5 will have in store for the staff.

THIS WEEK'S PICK SUMMARY

Here are the picks for this week.

DISCUSSION

Taking a quick look at the lines for Week 5, there are a ton of big favorites available on the board. With 15 games (Detroit and Green Bay have the first scheduled byes of the season), only three games right now have lines below a touchdown - Tampa Bay (-5 to -5.5) at Chicago on Thursday Night Football, Atlanta (-2.5 to -3) vs. Carolina, Houston (-6 to -6.5) hosting Jacksonville and Indianapolis (-2.5 to -3) at Cleveland. That leaves 11 favorites at a touchdown or more, so looking ahead at which teams you may want to save might be a good idea this week. Only Arizona (-7, at the Jets) and the Los Angeles Rams (-8, at Washington) are big road favorites, so that leaves nine big home favorites for Week 5. Expect the picks amongst the staff to be spread across those nine teams for the most part, but it will certainly be an interesting week with no clear choice - but plenty of strong options.

The picks are in late on Wednesday night, and some of the assumptions held true. The staff did indeed pick a wide array of teams - nine in all - but there was one clear consensus choice. With 9 of 22 staff choices (and only 21 were eligible), the Dallas Cowboys are the staff's leading pick for Week 5. While Dallas has clearly struggled so far on the young season, nothing seems to fix things more than facing a New York team this season. The Cowboys host the New York Giants in Week 5 and are 9.5-point favorites at home with a Money Line hovering around -440. That gives Dallas more than an 80% chance to finish as a winner on Sunday, which is imperative for the Cowboys at home against a very weak divisional foe. The rest of the Week 5 picks for the staff are reasonably scattered about for eight other favorites, starting with five teams that received two selections each: Arizona, Baltimore, Houston, Seattle and the Los Angeles Rams. Both the Cardinals (-7, at the Jets) and the Rams (-7, at Washington) are favored by a touchdown, but they are on the road and playing an early contest on the East Coast. Those tend to be tougher for West Coast teams, but picking NFC West teams against the NFC (L)East feels like a safe choice. According to both Money Lines, Arizona (-330) and Los Angeles (-360) are expected to win over 75% of the time in these matchups. Baltimore (-12 to -13, -800 or more) is a large favorite at home against the Bengals, and while a divisional matchup can be tricky, those big numbers are hard to overlook. Seattle (-7, -320) hosts the Vikings on Sunday Night Football and has similar odds to the other NFC West favorites. The one outlier and interesting pick for both Matt Carey and Justin Bonnema is the choice of the Texans. Picking an 0-4 team at home seems strange, but Houston (-6, -275) has a win expectation around 70-75% according to Las Vegas, and the Texans could rally after Bill O'Brien was let go this week.

Three unique picks round out the Week 5 selections with Kansas City, Pittsburgh and New Orleans. The Chiefs have a divisional clash with the Raiders in Kansas City this week, and the Raiders have been known to play the Chiefs hard, but Las Vegas expects the Chiefs (-13, -800) to win this matchup about 8 out of 9 times they would play in this scenario. The Steelers return to action after an unexpected bye due to Tennessee players' positive tests last week, and the Battle of Pennsylvania has Pittsburgh favored over the Eagles by a touchdown at home. The pool extends to Monday Night Football with the Saints (-7.5 to -8, -360) scheduled to host the Chargers, but that game could be moved to Indianapolis due to Hurricane Delta. New Orleans is no stranger to weather changing football schedules, so expect New Orleans to adjust either way here. Overall, with nine different teams chosen for Week 5, it could be interesting come next Tuesday in what could easily be another exciting week in the Footballguys' Eliminator Pool.

Please note a few things: We will be doing these picks every week, win or lose, to keep it entertaining all season long. Normally a Survivor/Eliminator pool would end once all but one player lost once, but to provide our subscribers with more perspectives, everyone will pick every week even if they lose. That said, we will still try and honor the spirit of an Eliminator/Survivor Pool, trying to win every week and not re-use any teams during the year.

COMMENTARY

Each week, contestants are invited to submit any comments that they might have about their picks. If they submit them early enough, we post them with the article. If not, the comments will be within the section below.

Jeff Pasquino: Things continue to go well here with my picks this season, so I hope to keep that positive momentum with my choice in Week 5. There are a lot of good choices this week with nearly a dozen big favorites, but I wanted to look ahead a bit and see which of them had a rougher slate the rest of the way. Dallas does have six games left in the NFC East (starting with Sunday's clash with the Giants), but aside from that game and possibly a trip to the Bengals, there does not appear to be a safer pick over the rest of the season than right now for the Cowboys at home against New York. Granted I try and stay away from divisional matchups, but at some point, you have to pick 17 different teams, and Dallas looks to be the best team in the worst division. Dallas' defense has been weak of late, but it has been weak against the run game - and with New York reduced to Devonta Freeman as their lead tailback instead of Saquan Barkley, the odds definitely tilt towards the Cowboys' favor. Dallas should score plenty of points this week as they have been racking them up of late, while New York has only scored 47 points in four games this year. This feels like the safest spot all season to take Dallas and steal a win in a very tough season-long marathon contest.

The Pick: Dallas Cowboys

Will Grant: Survivor pick is in. I'm risking it and taking Dallas.

I am picking the Cowboys this week even though I have no confidence in the team right now - but it's hard to imagine a more must-win game for them than being at home against the Giants. If you are going to take them at all this season, this would be the week.

The Pick: Dallas Cowboys

Good luck this weekend!

Questions, suggestions, and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com

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