Week 9 NFL Survivor Recap (2026): Jacksonville Beats Baltimore on Thursday Night
We told readers to avoid Jacksonville on Thursday for timing reasons and the Jaguars won 33–10. Seattle, Kansas City and San Francisco play Sunday.
November 6, 2026
Week 9 opened with the favorite winning comfortably. Jacksonville beat Baltimore 33–10 on Thursday night, a game the market had at 78 percent for the Jaguars at our refresh on November 3. The result was never close after halftime, and it moved a meaningful slice of the field forward: Jacksonville carried between 7 and 16 percent of entries depending on which board you read, and Baltimore carried almost none. The week’s biggest ownership blocks, Detroit, Kansas City and Seattle, all play Sunday.
Thursday night
Jacksonville beat Baltimore 33–10 at M&T Bank Stadium to open Week 9. The Jaguars were 78 percent at our refresh on November 3, an 8.5-point road favorite, and our Tuesday picks article had the line between -8.5 and -9.5, about -410 to -430. Baltimore was 22 percent at our refresh. The favorite won, so this is not an upset.
Per ESPN’s play-by-play, Bhayshul Tuten scored from a yard out on Jacksonville’s opening possession, Jake Moody answered with a 53-yard field goal, and Cam Little’s 36-yard kick made it 10–3 late in the first quarter. Trevor Lawrence found Parker Washington from 50 yards with 58 seconds left in the half for a 17–3 lead. From there Little kicked three more field goals, from 45, 47 and 33 yards, and Chris Rodriguez Jr. scored from 2 yards with 7:26 left to make it 33–3. Justice Hill’s 65-yard touchdown run on the next snap, 11 seconds later on the clock, was Baltimore’s only touchdown.
Lawrence finished 16 of 26 for 242 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions, and was not sacked. Joe Fagnano, the third quarterback on Baltimore’s depth chart, started and took 18 of the Ravens’ 19 pass attempts; Derrick Henry threw the other one. Fagnano was 10 of 18 for 60 yards and two interceptions, picked off by Montaric Brown and Jourdan Lewis. Baltimore finished with 55 net passing yards and 172 rushing yards, 85 of them from Hill on nine carries. Jacksonville outgained Baltimore 319 yards to 227 and turned the ball over once to the Ravens’ three. The Jaguars converted 4 of 12 third downs, the Ravens 4 of 14. Jacksonville is 6-2 and Baltimore is 4-5.
The survivor lens. More of the field was here than on most Thursday games this season, and almost all of it was on the winner. SurvivorGrid’s consensus board, which averages Yahoo, ESPN and USA Football Pools, had Jacksonville at 13.5 percent of Week 9 entries and Baltimore at 0.1 when we checked it Friday morning. ESPN’s Week 9 survivor column, published Wednesday afternoon, had the Jaguars at 7 percent of ESPN Survivor entries with 47 percent of entries still holding them, behind Detroit at 31, Seattle at 17 and Kansas City at 12; ESPN reported 1.9 percent of its original entries alive entering the week. Hard Rock Bet’s survivor contest, as of Thursday evening, had Jacksonville at 16.1 percent of submitted picks, third behind Kansas City at 23.8 and Detroit at 19.3, and Baltimore at zero. We have seen no published Circa Survivor count for either team; per Covers, 610 Circa entries were alive entering Week 9, and Circa’s contests page still showed 610 on Friday morning, which is what you would expect whether or not any entry was on the Jaguars, since the Jaguars won. VSiN’s Circa dashboard had Jacksonville available to 29.3 percent of the field on Wednesday, so most Circa entries had already spent them.
How our picks did
None of our recommendations played Thursday, so nothing of ours is graded yet. Our Week 9 picks article made Seattle the top pick, Kansas City the alternative, San Francisco the equivalent for anyone who had spent the Chiefs, and Detroit the fallback. All four play Sunday.
What did resolve was our avoid call. We put Jacksonville on the avoid list and at the top of the trap watch, and we were explicit that the number was fine and the timing was the problem: a Thursday kickoff locks first-kickoff pools before the week’s injury reports, and the price depended on an opponent’s quarterback depth chart. The Jaguars won by 23, so anyone who followed that call sat out a winner. It cost them nothing in the standings, and it did not cost them the Jaguars, who are still available for the two Tennessee games later in the season. The reasoning was about process, and the result does not change the process. It does mean our avoid list is one for one on favorites winning this week, which is the direction you want an avoid list to be wrong.
The trap watch’s open question, whether Joe Fagnano would make it to Thursday, resolved before kickoff: he started, as our Tuesday article expected. Neither Lamar Jackson nor Tyler Huntley attempted a pass.
What this week teaches
The cost of a Thursday pick is structural, and it is not charged every week. Jacksonville won, so the entries that committed Thursday gave up nothing this time. What they gave up in principle was the Friday, Saturday and Sunday-morning injury reports for every other game on the board, and the chance to compare the Jaguars’ number against Seattle’s and Kansas City’s once those settled. Our trap games guide treats a Thursday lock as a cost to be priced rather than a reason to never pick the game, and a week where the cost happens to be zero is not evidence that it is always zero.
Ownership on a Thursday game is a preview of how much of the pool is already safe. Between 7 and 16 percent of entries, depending on the board, advanced before Sunday’s slate kicked off. The remaining 84 to 93 percent are concentrated on Detroit, Kansas City and Seattle, which means the shape of most pools after Week 9 will be decided by three Sunday games. Our expected value guide is about weighing a team’s price against how much of the pool is on it, and this week that calculation runs through those three.
A 78 percent favorite winning is the base rate, not a lesson. A team at that price wins roughly four weeks in five. Thursday was one of the four. The weeks that teach something about the price are the fifth ones, and this was not one of them.
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