Fantasy Football: Week 6 – Survivor Pool and Thursday Night Game Preview

Week five was generally uneventful, although my third choice the Packers did go down taking about 10% of pools with them. With the Patriots loss early in the season taking a lot pools out, the data from Office Football Pool likely contains restarted pools so some of the data may not be representative of your pool of available teams.

Week six has some pretty terrible teams on bye, so it may be tougher to find an “easy” winner.

Bye week: Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Jacksonville Jaguars, New Orleans Saints

Survivor Pool – Week 6 selections

Here is what we have for a top 10 from Office Football Pool and ESPN as of mid-afternoon on Thursday.

The Falcons line up as the big choice for survivors this week.  My early top 3 picks for the week are listed below (my final column will be up Sunday):

1. Atlanta Falcons – The Raiders are coming off a bye and the Falcons are coming off a tough road win against the Redskins so many might lean toward avoiding the Falcons (even without playing the pool odds). That said, the Raiders have been blown out on the road in their two games this season and the Falcons. I see the Raiders covering the 8.5 points, but the Falcons win outright. I give the Falcons an 82% chance of winning. The Falcons look like my choice this week.
2. Arizona Cardinals – The Buffalo Bills are awful. Just terrible in all facets of the game and their offensive line has been ravaged by injuries. The Cardinals are coming off of a tough defeat at the hands of the Rams and have offensive line issues of their own. I think the Cardinals defense can take advantage of that weakness while the Bills cannot. I give the Cardinals a 74% chance of winning this game.
3. Pittsburgh Steelers – The Titans have scored more than 14 points only once this season. Yes, it was 41 and it was at home, but that was against a Lions team that has little talent on the defensive side of the ball. It’s a short week for both teams and the Steelers are dealing with injuries again in their defense. However, I think the Steelers are a solid choice because of their balance on offense and give them a 70% chance of winning.
4. Tampa Bay Buccaneers – The Bucs are coming off a bye and are facing a team quarterbacked by Brady Quinn. It can’t get any better for Tampa Bay than this.

Other teams I like early in the week: None

As for the avoid list, I’d lean away from the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers and Giants always seem to play close games and I think the Giants have the firepower to overwhelm the 49ers defense. A lot of their success will depend on the health of Hakeem Nicks and Martellus Bennett.

If you get bonus points for picking an underdog, I’d take Seattle at home. Seattle is a tough place to play and the Seahawks have a marauding defense that could disrupt Tom Brady.

Just a reminder, if you ever wanted to see what Vegas thinks each team’s “chances of winning” are, use this handy little converter to transform money lines into win percentages. You can also create a spreadsheet if you’d like (or use this one – scroll to the bottom) to do it for fun at home. This percentage chance to win is another quick way to gauge win expectations for each team each week. You can get a variety of money lines here or here.

Thursday night game preview – Pittsburgh Steelers v. Tennessee Titans

The Steelers are coming off a tight win and the Titans are coming off another debilitating loss. On paper, this looks like a mismatch. However, games aren’t played on paper (or something like that).

Pittsburgh Steelers

Get your Steelers into your lineup. The Titans are a friendly team to all offenses even in the games they win. Ben Roethlisberger is a QB1, Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown are WR1s and Rashard Mendenhall is an RB1 in his match up.

Heath Miller should be solid as the Titans are the worst defense against TEs this season. However, they did get Colin McCarthy back last week and he seemed to have some effect on slowing opposing TEs down.

Even the Steelers defense which has performed poorly is a good start this week.

Tennessee Titans

On the other side of the field, I just don’t see how you start anyone on the Titans. They cannot score and they cannot stop anyone.

Darius Reynaud should be another great start in return leagues as he should be running back a bunch of kickoffs. I could also see the Titans giving more of a look to him and Jamie Harper in the backfield should Chris Johnson continue to struggle.

Chris Garosi is a contributor for District Sports Page. One of his favorite sports memories is witnessing Wilson Alvarez’s no-hitter at Memorial Stadium in 1991. Chris has played fantasy sports since the pre-Internet days and participates in any league for any sport to which he’s invited. He even won an XFL fantasy league. Really. You can follow him on Twitter at @chrisgarosi.