Survivor Process: The Road to Thanksgiving — the Bullet's Eight-Week Map, Published in Advance So It Can Be Graded
The full Silver Bullet plan, Weeks 5 through 12: Denver, Philadelphia, the Rams, Cincinnati, Seattle, Buffalo, Dallas, and then the published Thanksgiving save in Baltimore. Three traps identified and walked around. Every pick is a projection, not a price — Week 5 yields to Wednesday's brief, and any early spend of the saves publishes as a deviation.
Last week's scope answered who the desk is saving for Thanksgiving weekend. This page answers the question that follows it: what happens on the way there. Here is the Silver Bullet's full plan — every week from Week 5 through Week 12, mapped in advance, in public, on the record. Not because the desk trusts October projections. Because the scorecard is the quality of logged decisions, and a map that publishes before the results is a map that can be graded. This page is the Bullet's map only; the portfolio's other tickets run their own shelves and are not this page's subject.
The field, as the grid reads this morning
Classic III woke up Sunday at 133 alive of 326 (the pool's own grid). The burn board underneath those 133 is the map's real terrain:
| Team | Burned by (share of 133) | Status for the Bullet |
|---|---|---|
| SF | ~97 — 73% | Gone before Week 2 ended |
| KC | ~75 — 56% | Gone in Week 3 |
| BAL | ~56 — 42% (burns today vs. TEN) | The Thanksgiving save |
| MIN | ~49 — 37% (burns today vs. MIA, us included) | Gone |
| DET | ~34 — 26% | Gone since Week 1 |
| BUF | ~25 — 19% | Available |
| PHI | ~23 — 17% | Available |
| SEA / LAR | ~9 each — 7% | Available |
| JAX | ~4 — 3% | The second door, Week 12 |
| Everyone else | ~2 or fewer | Available |
Two facts do the work. First: San Francisco and Kansas City — two of the league's top three on every board (Sharp) — are already gone for more than half the pool, which is why the middle of this field's shelf is thin and getting thinner. Second: Baltimore burns on roughly 42 percent of the alive field today, which means the desk's published Thanksgiving save is automatically contrarian — nearly half of Classic III cannot take the Ravens in Week 12 even if they want to. The save is not just safe. It is differentiated, for free, by arithmetic the field did to itself.
The map
Projections from schedule and three-week-old ratings (the full Weeks 5–12 slate). No lines exist beyond next week. That word — projection — does heavy lifting below, and the honesty section says what it costs.
| Week | Pick | Game | The read |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | DEN | at LAC, Sun 4:05 | Fourth on both boards at an 0-3 team that has lost every game by more than a touchdown. Fallback: CIN at MIA. |
| 6 | PHI | vs. CAR, Sun 1:00 | The softest home spot on the board against a bottom-five team. |
| 7 | LAR | at LV, Sun 4:25 | The thinnest week on the map. Eighth-rated at a 3-0 team the ratings still don't believe. The desk concedes a lower number here rather than touch the saves. |
| 8 | CIN | vs. TEN, Sun 1:00 | Ninth-rated at home against the league's floor. The map's biggest single number. |
| 9 | SEA | vs. ARI, Sun 4:25 | Sixth-rated at home against a bottom-eight team. |
| 10 | BUF | at NYJ, Sun 1:00 | The league's top-rated team at the league's floor. |
| 11 | DAL | vs. TEN, Sun 1:00 | Home against the floor again, in the week the save gets tested (below). |
| 12 | BAL | at HOU, Sun 1:00 | The save lands: seventh-rated at an 0-3 team still falling. Fallback: JAX vs. TEN. |
Every pick is bye-checked. No pick touches Baltimore or Jacksonville before Week 12. And the map leans off-crowd where the number allows — Denver, Cincinnati, and Dallas are each burned by roughly three percent of this pool or less — while riding the crowd only where the number is the number, which is the desk's standing rule wearing different weeks.
One note from the field: the commish of this very pool declared on the comment board that whoever plays Miami is the season's cheat code. The desk agrees with the read and declines the queue — Miami spots will be the most popular plays in the country every week they exist, and the map needs only one of them if the engine says so.
The three traps
- Week 10: Jacksonville at Tennessee. It looks like a gift — the second door, spent on the road, a week too early. The map takes Buffalo at the Jets instead, and JAX–TEN stays parked in the driveway for Week 12. A save spent early is a save that grades like any other spent asset: at the number, in November.
- Week 11: Baltimore at Carolina. This is the desert-board test. By late November the Panthers will be the kind of team that makes a saved Raven look spendable, and every survivor holding a thin shelf will feel the pull. The desk declines in writing: Houston in Week 12 projects worse than Carolina does now, the save was published, and spending it a week early publishes as a deviation with the owner's name on it — not a shrug.
- Week 7, generally. There is no giant that week without opening the holster. Los Angeles at Las Vegas is the best available seat, and if October's real numbers make it uglier than projected, that is the one week the map eats a smaller probability on purpose. Some weeks the plan is "don't do anything desperate." This is that week.
The honesty section
- Only Week 5 gets real numbers. The Wednesday brief prices Denver at Los Angeles properly, and the map yields to the engine. If the market hates the Broncos' number, the map says so here first.
- Weeks 6 through 12 are projections, not prices. Schedule spots plus power ratings from the season's first three weeks, which is a small sample speaking in a loud voice. Every weekly brief between now and Thanksgiving re-runs that week's row against actual lines, and the map updates where the market disagrees — published, per convention.
- If Minnesota loses this afternoon, this page is moot. The Bullet dies with it, and Monday's grading post opens with the pick, on the published terms. The map assumes the modal world and says so in daylight.
- The saves are load-bearing. Any forced spend of Baltimore or Jacksonville before Week 12 — an injury desert, a chalkpocalypse board — publishes as a deviation the day it happens, same rule as the Week 3 GB→BUF switch. A silent edit would be a broken process pretending to be a flexible one.
Eight weeks, eight seats, one shelf. The map is not a promise about the future — it is a commitment about the process: every pick on this page was written down before it was needed, and every one of them will be graded against the number it was made on. November is watching October. Bring a pencil.