Is Safety Rating A Real Thing? An NFL Survivor Primer

Way back in 2008, for whatever reason, I decided to sign up for ESPN.com's Eliminator Challenge. After thinking about my Week 1 pick for probably five minutes, I decided the strategy behind the contest was somewhat interesting, and decided to write a blog post about Week 2. Those two picks both won, as did the next 15.

This unlikely streak had two effects. Most immediately, it thoroughly annoyed me that I hadn't profited from going 17-0, as I was only in the free ESPN contest, and lost the tiebreaker.

The more lasting effect was that my shiny 2008 record caused people to think I knew what I was doing when it came to NFL Survivor contests. Which certainly wasn't the case at the time, and remains overstated even now. But here we are, five years later, and I'm still writing these posts. Considering that most of the people reading at this point surely weren't doing so in '08, and even then I never spelled out (had?) an overall strategy, now seems like as good a time as any to do just that.