NFL Week 5 survivor pool picks, strategy: Cardinals, Vikings for chalk and one shocking contrarian pick

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First, let us start by saying congratulations on making it to Week 5 in your survivor pool! You clearly didn’t go with the third-favorite Week 4 pick, Los Angeles Chargers over New York Giants, like many, many others did. (Or Green Bay over Cleveland in Week 3!) Great work.

OK, the celebrating is over. Time to lock in. Our survivor columnists, Renee Miller and Adam Gretz, are here to talk you through survivor pool strategy for a tight Week 5, and give you a chalk pick and contrarian pick to consider for your pool.

Week 5 strategy

Adam and Renee will avoid writing about the most-used teams from previous weeks to serve the largest number of readers. But where relevant, they’ll still advocate for or against a previously popular team, because not everyone will have used them.

Highest percentage by week: Denver (W), Baltimore (W), Seattle (W), Detroit (W)

Renee: Well, another pretty good showing from our favorites in Week 4 has most survivor pools still full of contenders. Of the top five teams, only the Chargers lost (picked by ~15 percent of people). I don’t want to say I told you so, but cross-country road teams facing a new QB and coach on the hot seat are too dicey for me. While the Bills were almost the most popular team picked in both of the last two weeks, I know that many of us still have them in our back pockets. This is another great spot for them, home vs. New England and a 7.5-point favorite. The Lions are again a double-digit favorite at Cincinnati, and Baltimore should handle Houston at home — but watch the injury report before committing. The Ravens are banged up on both sides of the ball. While we aren’t writing these teams up anymore, they remain viable choices for those who saved them.

Where I’m going this weekend feels scary, but my favorite play (after Detroit) sure has the confidence of oddsmakers. Week 5 is almost a third of the way through the season, and we know enough about teams to detect potential pitfalls. We also can see the future, which has shrunk as we move ever forward. Our ideas about who to save for the end game have to adapt, as we really can’t trust teams like San Francisco or Minnesota like we thought we could in Week 1. My choice has the advantage of no other great matchups the rest of the way (it’s an even worse schedule than my previous pick, the Rams).

A lot of survivors are going to have to venture slightly out of their comfort zones due to having used some or all of the most choice picks already. There are a lot of close spreads this weekend, and way too many games that could easily go either way. Be careful!

Adam: I felt like for all of 2024, I was on a roll and couldn’t miss with my picks, whether it be chalk or contrarian. The past two weeks, however, I was absolutely burned by Cleveland beating Green Bay and the winless Giants beating the Chargers. Such is life in the NFL, where literally anything can happen in any given week. That’s what makes survivor pools so chaotic. Nothing is given here.

Having said that, I still love a lot of matchups for this week.

Detroit over Cincinnati seems like the most obvious pick of the week if you still have the Lions available to you. The Bengals don’t have a Joe Burrow injury problem; they have a bad football team problem where flaws are no longer being masked by a top-tier passer. Detroit is the biggest favorite in the NFL this week for a reason. The Lions will roll.

Buffalo over New England also seems like a pretty strong bet if you have the Bills available to you.

I have reached the point in the season where I am far more willing to start using the top-tier teams if a favorable matchup presents itself — this applies especially if you are in a smaller pool that has really seen its numbers take a hit the past two weeks with the Packers and Chargers losing their heavy-favorite matchups.

If you’re getting to a point where your league is smaller and getting close to a win, take the safest pick you can and get yourself to the next week.

But I’m going in a different direction since the Lions and Bills are no longer available to us to write up this week, and it’s a pick that I still feel pretty confident in.

Week 5 chalk picks

The table below lists the five most popular survivor picks for Week 5 from Yahoo Fantasy, with the percentage of pick distribution for each of those teams as well as the point spread, from BetMGM, for each of their games as of Oct. 1.

Renee: Arizona Cardinals over Tennessee Titans

The Cardinals are 2-2, having handled two easy wins to start the season, then falling in consecutive close games to division rivals. They get another easy game at home this week and are currently nine-point favorites. Tennessee is 0-4, coming off a shutout by another formerly winless team, the Houston Texans. Shoutout to Adam and others who saw Houston as a great play last weekend.

It definitely feels more like picking against Tennessee than picking for Arizona, but the Cardinals are flush with young talent on offense. The Titans are the cure for whatever ails an opposing offense anyway, but look for Trey Benson to make a major impact on Sunday afternoon against a Tennessee run defense that hasn’t stopped anyone this year. On the defensive side, Arizona has allowed the sixth-fewest points per game to its opponents, and Tennessee is the lowest-scoring team in the league.

Finally, let’s look ahead. There is no other game where the Cardinals are better than 3.5-point favorites the rest of the way. You don’t have to use every team in the league, of course, but if you’re keen to save Detroit, Buffalo or Baltimore for leaner weeks in the future, I love Arizona now.

Adam: Minnesota Vikings over Cleveland Browns

I know the Vikings mostly laid a giant egg against the Pittsburgh Steelers a week ago, at least for the first 53 minutes before they finally started to show some pushback, but I still like this matchup against Cleveland.

For one, and this is a more subjective argument, Minnesota’s already been overseas for a full week and should be fully adjusted to the time changes and everything else that comes with extended overseas travel. The Browns are just arriving this week.

But more practically speaking, as good as the Browns defense can be at times, and as disruptive as Myles Garrett might be against a banged-up Vikings offensive line, I just hate this matchup for the Browns. The Browns offense mostly stinks and has not really done much against anybody, and you have to figure Brian Flores is going to have something dialed up that can feast on either an aging and washed-up Joe Flacco or an unproven and inexperienced Dillon Gabriel if the Browns turn to him.

The Vikings also have significantly more playmakers (on both sides of the ball) and should be able to get enough out of Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison to make a difference in this game.

The Carson Wentz-led Vikings aren’t as good as they looked against a bad Bengals team. They are not as bad as they looked for most of Sunday’s game against a tough Steelers defense. The reality is somewhere in the middle, and that reality is still better than what Cleveland is going to be putting on the field.

If you still have Detroit saved, this might be a good week to unleash them against the aforementioned bad Bengals team, especially with them having some tougher matchups (and a bye week) in the coming weeks. You don’t need to sit on them forever, and this might be a good time to turn to them if you’ve got them. If you don’t, trust the Vikings to beat a bad Cleveland team.

Week 5 contrarian picks

Renee: Los Angeles Rams over San Francisco 49ers

This one will still feel pretty strange for a lot of us, but the 49ers have not been as strong as expected on either side of the ball this season. There are injuries contributing to their struggles, but regardless of the cause, it’s our job to pick on the struggling teams, or at least to pick against them. Basically the entire offense outside of Christian McCaffrey is questionable or already ruled out, and it’s a short week (they play Thursday night).

McCaffrey is a star, no doubt, but the Rams have given up the fewest fantasy points to opposing running backs this year. This isn’t fantasy football, but I bring it up to point out that it’s asking a lot of your one healthy player to make plays against a formidable opponent who has basically shut down that aspect of the game so far.

Aside from the woes of the 49ers, the Rams have looked legit in all four of their games this season. They lost to the 4-0 Super Bowl champion Eagles by one score, while handing the formerly undefeated Colts their first loss last week. They run a balanced offense that is a challenge for any opponent to contain, with a great one-two punch at running back and wide receiver. Puka Nacua can catch anything thrown his way. The 49ers couldn’t stop the Jacksonville Jaguars — who have a loss to the Jake Browning-led Bengals on their record — from scoring, and they won’t be able to hold this far more talented and well-coached Rams team out of the end zone either.

Adam: Miami Dolphins over Carolina Panthers

There are a lot of reasons to not pick the Dolphins in a survivor pool. Or any pool. Or for any game. It’s not a particularly good football team. The defense has a lot of problems, and now their best playmaker, Tyreek Hill, is out of the lineup.

All fair.

All valid reasons.

But just think of the counterpoint here: Carolina is not only a pretty bad team — again — it is also coming off one of the more dreadful performances of the 2025 season so far. Bryce Young still has issues with consistency, the defense still isn’t very good, and even without Hill in the lineup, Mike McDaniel’s gimmicks and offense have a tendency to work against bad teams. I think he has enough tricks up his sleeve to get a win against another bad team.

This is another one of those picks where I’m going against a team more than picking in favor of one.

(Photo of Kyler Murray: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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