NFL Survivor Pool Week 3
Everyone is on the same team. Should you be?
Week 3 is when survivor pools develop a crowd. Two weeks of results have sorted the league into obvious favorites, the group chat has agreed on one of them, and most of your pool is about to pick the same team. Whether you join them is the most important decision of the week. It is also still a fine week to start a pool from scratch, because a Week 3 pool is a clean slate for everyone in it.
Here is the full 2026 Week 3 slate with kickoff times, how to think about the crowd, and how to get a fresh pool running before Thursday, September 24 at 8:15 PM ET.
The Week 3 slate
All times Eastern. Picks lock at each game's kickoff.
Thursday, September 24
- Atlanta Falcons at Green Bay Packers8:15 PM
Sunday, September 27
- Carolina Panthers at Cleveland Browns1:00 PM
- Cincinnati Bengals at Pittsburgh Steelers1:00 PM
- Houston Texans at Indianapolis Colts1:00 PM
- Kansas City Chiefs at Miami Dolphins1:00 PM
- Los Angeles Chargers at Buffalo Bills1:00 PM
- New York Jets at Detroit Lions1:00 PM
- Seattle Seahawks at Washington Commanders1:00 PM
- Tennessee Titans at New York Giants1:00 PM
- New England Patriots at Jacksonville Jaguars1:00 PM
- Arizona Cardinals at San Francisco 49ers4:05 PM
- Minnesota Vikings at Tampa Bay Buccaneers4:05 PM
- Baltimore Ravens at Dallas Cowboys4:25 PM
- Las Vegas Raiders at New Orleans Saints4:25 PM
- Los Angeles Rams at Denver Broncos8:20 PM
Monday, September 28
- Philadelphia Eagles at Chicago Bears8:15 PM
How to think about your Week 3 pick
Know where the crowd is before you pick
By Week 3 most pools have a consensus pick, the one heavy favorite everyone in the group chat is on. That is fine in a small pool. In a big one it is the whole game: if the crowd's team loses, everyone on it goes out together (or the week voids and nobody does), and the few players who were elsewhere jump straight to the front. Decide on purpose whether you are riding with the crowd or stepping off it.
Fade the crowd only with a real alternative
Being different for its own sake is how you lose alone. The time to step off the consensus is when there is a second pick you like almost as much, and the pool is big enough that surviving a crowd wipeout is worth the small extra risk. In a pool of eight, take the safe team. In a pool of eighty, the contrarian pick is a legitimate strategy.
Two games is a sample, not a season
A team that is 2-0 has beaten two opponents; a team that is 0-2 may have played the two best teams on its schedule. Use the results as a tiebreaker between picks you already liked, and be suspicious of any pick that only looks good because of last Sunday's score.
Lost a life already? Play tighter, not scared
If your mulligan is gone, every remaining week is sudden death, and that argues for the safer of two picks, not for hiding in the crowd. If you are still on two lives, this is the week where a modest risk costs the least: a loss now burns the spare, but you have sixteen weeks of information ahead to make up for it.
Alive in one pool, out in another
Plenty of people run two or three pools and the boards have drifted apart by now: a team you burned in one is still available in another. Keep the lists straight. In Outpick each pool tracks its own used teams and greys them out on the pick screen, so a mix-up cannot cost you a week.
The thin weeks are close enough to plan for
Look at the next month of schedules now. Bye weeks and short weeks take teams off the board and turn some weeks into two or three real options. Save a strong team for each of those weeks instead of spending it on a Week 3 game you could win with someone else. Outpick Pro's season planner lets you pencil in every remaining week, greys out anything you have used or planned, and locks each plan in at kickoff.
See where the field went
Once a Week 3 game kicks off, the live picks page shows what share of Outpick players took each team, and once the game goes final, who survived. That is the crowd, measured. Nothing is revealed before kickoff, so nobody can copy it in advance, which is the same rule the app enforces inside every pool.
That page is the honest version of the "pick percentages" grids other sites put behind a paywall. No odds, no lines, just real picks from real pools.
Starting fresh in Week 3
A survivor pool can start from any week. A pool that starts in Week 3 gives everyone in it all 32 teams, no burned picks, and sixteen weeks to play, which is more than enough to produce a champion. It closes to new members at the first Week 3 kickoff, so nobody can join late with an advantage. If your group got knocked out of another pool in the first two weeks, this is the reset.
In Outpick, a pool created after this week's first game starts the following week instead, so create it before Thursday, September 24 at 8:15 PM ET to play Week 3. Set the mulligans (zero for strict survivor, one or two for a second life), share the invite code, and the app handles locks, results and standings. The free house pools are open to anyone until their first kickoff too.
Already alive? Two teams gone, sixteen weeks to go, and the pick that matters most this week is the one about the crowd. Make it before your team kicks off.
Out already? Week 3 is a clean slate.
Create a pool or join a house pool before the first Week 3 kickoff. Free to play, picks lock at kickoff, standings update themselves.
