NFL Survivor pool rules, settled

Survivor, also called last man standing or eliminator, is the simplest NFL office format to explain and the easiest to argue about. Every dispute comes from one of six things: a tie, a bye, a postponement, a missed pick, a late joiner, or somebody asking to buy back in. Decide all six now and the season runs itself. Our own rule sits under each section. A different rule is fine. An unwritten one is not.

The core rule

Each week you pick one team to win its game outright. It wins, you survive. It does not, you are out. Each of the 32 teams may be used only once all season, so a win costs you that team forever. No points, no spreads, no partial credit. The strategy is all sequencing: spending a strong team on an easy Week 3 matchup is the safe play now and the reason you are choosing between two bad options in December.

1. 01

   The week's card arrives

   Every entry still alive sees the coming week's games and the teams it has not used. A team you have picked before is gone for the season, win or lose.

2. 02

   Choose exactly one team

   One team you expect to win outright. No spreads, no margins, no second pick. Spending a heavy favorite early is how people run out of teams in November.

3. 03

   Lock it in before that game kicks off

   The pick seals at that game's kickoff, so a Sunday choice is still open while Thursday night is settled. Once locked it cannot be swapped.

4. 04

   The game is played and the pick settles

   A win advances you. A loss or a tie ends your run, and so does no pick at all.

5. 05

   Survivors go again, with one fewer team

   Everyone alive repeats it with a shorter list. The race ends when one entry is left, or at the last week of the regular season.

What counts as elimination

Three things end a run and people only ever expect the first. Your team loses. Your team ties, which has its own section below. Or you made no pick, which most rule sets score exactly like a loss, because a blank week is not a bye week. A mulligan softens all of that and removes the reason anyone checks the channel on a Sunday. If you want something longer-running, run a pick'em alongside it.

How Office Rivals settles it. One entry, one life. A loss, a tie or a missing pick eliminates the entry, and the elimination is recorded with its reason.

Ties, the rule everyone argues about

NFL regular-season games can end level after overtime. It happens once or twice a season, rare enough that nobody has thought about it. The strict, traditional reading is that a tie eliminates you: the rule was that your team wins, and it did not win. The friendly one counts a tie as a win. In between, some pools void the pick and let you carry on. There is no correct answer, only a written one. Pin your line before Week 1, because a pool that decides this after the tie will be accused of deciding it to suit somebody.

How Office Rivals settles it. A tie eliminates the entry, treated identically to a loss. It is printed on the pick card every single week, so nobody reaches a tied game without having read the rule.

Byes and postponements

A bye is not an edge case, just a smaller menu. Watch the weeks where byes cluster, because several strong teams resting at once is when people get forced into a pick they did not want.

Postponements are the awkward one. A postponed game is judged on the day it is actually played. A cancelled game voids every pick made on it, so nobody advances and nobody dies on a game that did not happen. And the player whose game was voided has not skipped the week, so the missed-pick rule must not fire on them.

How Office Rivals settles it.A postponed game holds the week open, so nobody can be eliminated for a missing pick in a week that has not finished. A cancelled game voids the pick, returns that team to the player's list, and still counts as having picked, so a void can never kill anyone.

Buy-backs and second chances

A buy-back lets an eliminated entrant pay again and rejoin, usually capped at the first few weeks. In a money pool it makes sense: the pot grows and the field stays healthy. With no money in it, a buy-back solves a problem you do not have. What you want in Week 7, with two thirds of the office out, is a second competition still live.

How Office Rivals settles it. No buy-backs, no second entries, no mid-season restarts. Eliminated players keep playing the weekly Pick'em, which runs all eighteen weeks and knocks nobody out. We take no buy-ins and hold no pot, which removes the buy-back question along with most of the reason companies ban pools at all. If your workplace is weighing that up, start with whether office pools are legal.

Late entry and anchor weeks

The standard rule closes entries at the first kickoff of Week 1, because a Week 6 entrant has five fewer chances to die and the pick of every team. For a workplace that is stricter than it needs to be. Sixty-four companies installed our World Cup app across two launch days, most with the tournament already running, because somebody had mentioned it at lunch. Telling them to come back next season is how you get no offices.

How Office Rivals settles it.Each company pool is anchored to the week its first entrant joins, and entries close at that week's first kickoff. Everyone starts together with all 32 teams, and the card names the week the race starts and the week it ends. A Week 9 pool runs a real ten-week race, which for a first season is usually the better one anyway.

Copy-paste rule set

Everything above, condensed into something you can paste and pin.

Letting the pool enforce itself

Every rule above is enforceable by hand, and every one is something a person has to remember while busy: used teams, lock times, void games, who picked before kickoff. Office Rivalsruns Survivor in a Slack or Google Chat channel beside the weekly Pick'em. The card arrives privately with only your unused teams on it, the pick locks at kickoff on its own, eliminations come from the real results, and the bad news reaches the player privately on a weekday morning rather than being announced to the room. Free for up to 5 players.