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Survival Pool Advice: Week 8 is a nightmare

Minnesota Vikings defensive end Everson Griffen had his name misspelled on his uniform Sunday. (Getty Images)
The Vikings are everyone’s survival favorite on Sunday. (Getty Images)

Need a friendly ear and some direct advice for your survival pool picks? Friend me on Facebook. Or hit me up on Twitter @kevinkaduk. Let’s ride the roller coaster together.

Resources: Yahoo survival pool pick distributionSurvivorGrid.com
Week 7’s biggest killer: Atlanta Falcons losing to San Diego Chargers (14.56 percent)
Week 7’s biggest winner: Cincinnati Bengals over Cleveland Browns (44.32 percent)
Total Week 7 eliminations: 17.46 percent of entries
Perfect entries remaining on Yahoo: 44,678

This is the survival pick weekend from hell.

Those who are left are already eight weeks into the season and so some tough calls can be expected. But go ahead and look at the top six games listed on our picks distribution page and tell me if there’s any game that people are feeling *great* about picking this week.

The Minnesota Vikings over the Chicago Bears is far and away the most popular pick with 56.04 of players riding with the purple people eaters on Thursday afternoon. But if you’re a survival pool purist, picking the Vikings violates so many rules. It’s a road game, it’s a division game and it’s a night game on national television. Yes, the Bears are terrible but the Vikings — who are coming off a loss in Philadelphia — are basically in the same spot where the Pittsburgh Steelers were going into Miami two weekends ago. That wiped out 37 percent of the pool.

The second-most popular pick, Denver over the Chargers at home (15.54 percent) features a division game just 17 days after San Diego whipped the Broncos in California. Not many teams win at Mile High, but San Diego just beat Atlanta at home last Sunday, knocking out just over 14 percent of the pool. The Broncos just lost CJ Anderson to the IR and San Diego is a few plays away from being much better than that 3-4 record.

Those who have picked exclusively against Cleveland are still here to tell about it, but do you really feel great about picking Ryan Fitzpatrick and the dysfunctional New York Jets to go into Cleveland and win? Just over 10 percent of Yahoo entries think it’s a risk worth taking.

New England is probably going to win at Buffalo, but they’ve been a popular pick since Tom Brady returned and the chances are that you’ve already used them up. And again, we’re talking about a division game on the road. Good luck to the 4.25 percent of entries who are going with the Pats.

Dallas over Philadelphia (4.10)? Another division game on a Sunday night.

The Tennessee Titans over Jacksonville Jaguars (3.57)? Another division game on a Thursday night.

Even if you go further down the list, you just get more depressed. Can the offensively-starved Seahawks with a banged-up Russell Wilson win a shootout in New Orleans? The Raiders have been great on the road, but can they survive the long trip and time challenges of a trip to Tampa Bay? Why couldn’t the Texans be better so we could just pick them to beat Detroit and be done with it? There’s room to get cute here this week, but where?

There are land mines abound and all of it is enough that it almost makes me glad the Steelers kneecapped me on that trip down to Miami (ALMOST).

My pick: If you’ve got the Patriots left, trust in Tom Brady. If you want to get cute, give a big roll of the dice on Seattle down in Big Easy. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s any choice but to go with the crowd and go with the Vikings. If Jay Cutler and John Fox somehow get on the same page and beat you, well, so be it. Many of you might want to avoid a potential pitfall and hide out with the Cowboys instead, but Dallas holds too much future value. They’re in Cleveland next week, then host Baltimore and Washington after a trip to Pittsburgh. Don’t burn them here.

Who are you picking? Let us know in the comments below.