How an NFL playoff survivor pool works, and how to survive all four rounds

Survivor pools are usually a 17-week grind. A playoff survivor pool squeezes the whole thing into four rounds and about a month. It’s quicker, it’s easy for people who skipped the regular-season pool to join, and it has a twist that catches most people out: there are so few teams that every pick you make limits what you can pick later.

Here’s how it works, the rules worth settling before the first game, and how to avoid the mistake that eliminates the most entries.

The basic format

The most common version:

• One pick per round. Pick one team to win in the Wild Card round, one in the Divisional round, one in the conference championships and one in the Big Game.
• Each team once. Once you’ve used a team, it’s gone for the rest of the pool.
• Lose and you’re out. If your team loses, your entry is eliminated. Playoff games can’t end in a tie (overtime continues until someone scores), so there’s no tie rule to worry about.
• Last one standing wins. If more than one entry survives the final, a tiebreaker decides it, or the survivors share the title.

The shape of the playoffs drives everything:

Notice the last row. In the final round you choose between two teams, and only if you haven’t already used them.

The mistake that eliminates the most entries

Most people play a playoff survivor pool like a regular-season one: take the biggest favorite every round and worry about later, later.

The problem is that the strongest teams are exactly the ones likely to still be playing at the end. Use one in the Wild Card round, and if it keeps winning, you can’t pick it in the conference championship or the final. In the last round you may be left with just one option, the team playing against yours.

Work backwards instead:

• Ask who you’ll want in the last two rounds. The No. 1 seeds can’t be picked in the Wild Card round anyway, and they’re usually the likeliest finalists. Plan to save them.
• Use teams early that are good bets now but unlikely to go deep. A big Wild Card favorite whose next game is on the road against a No. 1 seed is the classic early pick. It’s likely to win this week and unlikely to be in your way later.
• If a team you used keeps winning, plan to pick against it. If your Wild Card team reaches the conference championship, its opponent is a natural pick for that round.
• Think about both conferences. Spreading your picks across the AFC and NFC keeps more options open for the final.

None of this makes a pool safe. Even sensible four-round paths survive only a small share of the time, and PoolGenius’s playoff guide puts a careful path at roughly one in ten. Planning just stops you from knocking yourself out before the games do.

Why your tiebreaker matters more than usual

In a full-season pool, the field usually thins to one or two entries. In a playoff pool, the final round is a choice between two teams, so if a dozen entries are still alive, roughly half of them are likely to pick the winner.

Expect several entries to survive the final. That makes the tiebreaker the real deciding rule, so pick it before the playoffs start:

• Final-game score prediction. Everyone guesses the total points in the last game, and the closest guess wins. It’s the natural fit, because everyone’s watching that game anyway.
• Share the title. Simple and friendly, but it rarely crowns one winner.
• Toughest picks. The entry that survived with the riskiest picks (the biggest underdogs, by the point spread) wins.

More options are in our tiebreaker guide.

Rules worth deciding before the first game

• Can a team be used twice? “Each team once” is the standard and makes planning matter. Allowing one repeat makes the pool friendlier and less strategic.
• One pick in the Wild Card round, or two? With six Wild Card games, some pools ask for two winners to thin the field early. It’s harder, and a lot of entries go out in the first weekend.
• When do picks lock? At each game’s kickoff, so you can pick a Monday game after seeing Saturday’s results, or at the first game of the round, which is simpler and stops late switching.
• Missed picks. Is a missed pick a loss, or does the entry get an automatic pick?
• Everyone loses. If every remaining entry goes out in the same round, does the tiebreaker decide, or do they share it? See what happens if everyone loses.
• Entries per person. One each keeps it simple. A few each makes it more of a strategy game.

Whatever you choose, write it down before the Wild Card round. A rule settled in advance is just a rule. A rule invented in the middle of the conference championship is an argument.

Running a playoff pool for your group

Still Standing runs private playoff survivor pools for groups of friends, offices and families. You pick the rules, players join from your link, and we handle the picks, the scores and the reminders. After each round we draft a recap for you to review and send. Your rules page lays out every setting in plain English before anyone picks, and any change shows up in the change log.

Something unclear, or a rule you’d like us to add? Send us feedback.