Week 5 NFL Survivor Recap (2026): Tampa Bay Upsets Dallas on Thursday Night
Top pick Dallas lost Thursday. Houston and Jacksonville both won Sunday. Every avoid-list team won. Monday's Rams upset touched none of our picks.
October 9, 2026 · Updated October 13, 2026
Week 5 is complete. Dallas, the most popular survivor pick of the week and our top pick, lost 24–16 to Tampa Bay on Thursday night. Sunday was kinder to the field: the three teams most of the survivors moved to after Dallas, Cincinnati, Houston and Jacksonville, all won, and the day’s three upsets, led by Seattle, hit teams almost nobody was holding. Monday night added a fifth upset, Buffalo over the Rams in overtime, in a game that held a handful of entries. Per VSiN, 2,913 Circa Survivor entries were alive after Sunday, with three of them pending on the Rams.
Thursday night
Tampa Bay beat Dallas 24–16 on the road to open Week 5. The Cowboys were priced at 64 percent at our refresh on September 29, a 3.5-point home favorite. That was a look-ahead number set nine days before kickoff, and our grid was not repriced again before the game. The market moved a long way after it: by Thursday morning SurvivorGrid’s vig-free number had Dallas near 80 percent, and VSiN listed the Cowboys as 9.5-point favorites. By any of those prices, this is the first upset of the week.
Jalon Daniels made his second start with Baker Mayfield out, and per the Buccaneers’ game story Bucky Irving ran for 165 yards on 21 carries. Tampa Bay is now 1-4; it had not won a game before Thursday.
The survivor lens. This one reached deep into the field. SurvivorGrid’s consensus board, which averages pick distribution across Yahoo, ESPN and USA Football pools, had Dallas at 45.1 percent of Week 5 entries, with Cincinnati next at 25.1 and Houston at 14.5. Tampa Bay registered at 0.0 percent. For comparison, the same board had 12.2 percent on Green Bay before its Week 3 Thursday loss and 5.4 percent on Buffalo, last week’s most popular loser.
Circa Survivor had 5,972 entries alive entering the week, per VSiN, which cited a PoolGenius projection that about 35 percent of survivor entries would take Dallas. That is a projection, not a count. Circa’s actual pick numbers had not been published as of Friday morning; VSiN reports they are due Saturday night.
In a pool that locks at the first kickoff, every Week 5 pick froze at 8:15 p.m. ET Thursday, before this result was known. Entries on Cincinnati, Houston and Jacksonville carry on into Sunday.
Sunday
Thirteen games were played Sunday, one of them in London, and the favorite won nine. Three favorites lost and one game ended in a tie. All prices below are from our refresh on September 29; our grid was not repriced again before kickoff.
The favorites that held. New England and Detroit, tied for the widest number on the board at 77 percent, both won by 24 or more. The Patriots beat Las Vegas 45–17 at home and the Lions won 45–21 at Arizona. Cincinnati (70 percent) won 31–24 at Miami. Baltimore (64 percent) won 30–23 at Atlanta on Sunday night with Tyler Huntley at quarterback; the Ravens ruled Lamar Jackson out on Friday. Our picks article noted the line had moved to Atlanta by Thursday, so by the closing number this was the underdog winning. Houston (62 percent) won 26–3 at Tennessee. Green Bay (60 percent) beat Chicago 31–7 at home. Pittsburgh (56 percent) beat Indianapolis 34–22 at home, the Jets (54 percent) beat Cleveland 17–12 at home, and Minnesota (53 percent) won 23–13 at New Orleans.
The upsets, ranked by the loser’s price.
- Seattle, 64 percent, lost 32–29 at home to San Francisco. The 49ers were priced at 36 percent. This was the biggest upset of the day.
- The Chargers, 56 percent, lost 23–17 at home to Denver. The Broncos were priced at 44 percent.
- Philadelphia, 53 percent, lost 19–17 to Jacksonville in London, a neutral-site game. Jacksonville was 47 percent at our refresh. By the Thursday-morning numbers in our picks article, which had the Jaguars laying 7.5 points, this was the favorite winning. By our recorded price it is an upset by a few points, and we file it that way.
The tie. The Giants and Washington finished 27–27 after overtime. Washington was priced at 54 percent and the Giants at 46. There is no winner and it is neither an upset nor a favorite win, but most survivor pools grade a tie as a loss for the entry, so for most people on either side it was an elimination.
The survivor lens. The crowd that survived Thursday mostly survived Sunday. ESPN’s Week 5 survivor column had 35 percent of ESPN Survivor entries on Cincinnati, 13 percent on Houston and 1 percent on Jacksonville, and all three won. SurvivorGrid’s consensus board, which tracks Yahoo, ESPN and USA Football pools, finished Week 5 with Cincinnati at 25.7 percent, Houston at 14.7 and Jacksonville at 4.1. The Sunday losers barely register there: Atlanta 0.7 percent, the Giants 0.5, Washington 0.3, Seattle 0.1, the Chargers 0.1 and Philadelphia 0.0.
Circa Survivor felt Sunday more, because Dallas had already cut its field to 3,415. Per VSiN, 502 more Circa entries were eliminated Sunday: Atlanta’s loss took out 262, and the Giants–Commanders tie took out 210, including 209 on Washington. The 573 entries on Jacksonville all advanced on the Jaguars’ late field goal. That leaves 2,913 live entries, with three picks pending on the Rams and one on the Bills for Monday night.
Monday night
Buffalo beat the Rams 37–34 in overtime at SoFi Stadium to close Week 5. Los Angeles was priced at 60 percent at our refresh on September 29, a 3-point home favorite, and our grid was not repriced again before kickoff. Per VSiN, Circa’s number on Sunday night had the Rams laying 3.5. By either price this is an upset, the fifth favorite to lose this week, and the Bills were 40 percent at our refresh.
Kyren Williams scored from the 1 with five seconds left in regulation to make it 34–34. In overtime, James Cook fumbled at the Rams’ 22, Harrison Mevis then had a 48-yard field goal blocked by Greg Rousseau, and Tyler Bass kicked a 45-yarder with 1:55 left for the win. Josh Allen ran for 121 yards on ten carries, and Matthew Stafford completed 40 of 54 passes for 383 yards and three touchdowns. Buffalo is 4-1 and the Rams are 2-3.
The survivor lens. Almost nobody was in this game. SurvivorGrid’s consensus board had the Rams at 0.1 percent of Week 5 entries and the Bills at 0.1. Per VSiN’s Sunday night update, Circa Survivor had three live entries pending on the Rams and one on the Bills. If those counts held, the Rams’ loss took out three of the 2,913 entries that survived Sunday and left 2,910 alive going into Week 6. We have not seen a published post-game count from Circa, so treat that as arithmetic rather than a report.
How our picks did
Our Week 5 picks article made Dallas at home against Tampa Bay the top pick, and Dallas lost 24–16. There is no softer way to say it: the safest number on the board was our lead recommendation, and it lost.
The other two recommendations both won. Houston, the alternative, beat Tennessee 26–3. Jacksonville, the save-your-studs play for large pools, beat Philadelphia 19–17 in London. An entry that followed the big-pool advice in that article is alive today, and an entry that followed the small-pool advice is not.
The avoid list was wrong in the way an avoid list can be wrong: every team on it won. Baltimore won 30–23 with its backup quarterback, Cincinnati won 31–24, and all four favorites in the games priced inside a field goal (Green Bay, Pittsburgh, the Jets, Minnesota) won as well. Those were warnings about risk, not predictions of losses, but a reader who skipped Cincinnati on our word gave up a 70 percent team that won by a touchdown.
Of the three trap-watch items, only the first, ownership concentration on a Thursday game, mattered: nearly half of consensus entries locked on Dallas before Friday’s reports and were eliminated. Jackson was ruled out Friday, as the second item warned, without changing a result. Cincinnati’s receivers did not matter.
Monday night did not touch our recommendations. The picks article listed Bills at Rams in its 3 to 5.5 tier with the Rams laying 2.5 to 3, off both the top of the board and the avoid list, so the Rams’ loss is one we neither recommended nor warned against.
What this week teaches
An 80 percent favorite loses one week in five. That is what the price says, and Thursday was one of those weeks. The expected value guide is built on treating a win probability as a probability, not a promise, which is also why a loss at that price does not by itself make the pick a mistake. Sunday was the other side of the same base rate: nine favorites held. Monday night’s 60 percent Rams were the week’s fifth favorite to lose in fifteen games.
Concentration is where pools are decided. When nearly half a pool sits on one team, a loss rearranges the standings in one night and a win changes nothing between those entries. That asymmetry is the core argument in our complete strategy guide for leaning away from the crowd as pools get larger. This week the low-ownership option, Jacksonville at about 4 percent, also won.
Ties are a real outcome, and most pools score them as losses. The Washington price was 54 percent at our refresh and the game ended 27–27. Per VSiN, 209 Circa entries on Washington were eliminated by a game that had no winner. Know how your pool scores a tie before one happens. Our complete strategy guide lists tie handling among the pool rules that change the math more than any single pick does.
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