Thirty-two teams, eighteen weeks
The arithmetic is what makes NFL survivor hard. There are more teams than weeks, so in a one-shot pool you will never need all of them — but you also cannot bank the good ones, because the team you are saving for week fourteen has a bye, or has fallen apart, or is suddenly the underdog.
Every week is a choice between the best team available now and the best team available later, and the field thins fastest in the weeks where the obvious pick loses and takes half the pool with it.
Byes are part of the format
From week five onward a handful of teams are not playing at all, which quietly removes them from your options for that week. Pools that ignore this are the ones where somebody picks a team on a bye and argues about it afterwards. Here the board only ever shows teams that are actually playing.
Strikes, and how many to allow
One strike is the traditional form and it is ruthless — a single Sunday upset can end two thirds of a pool, and a pool that is down to four people in October stops being fun for the other twenty. Two or three strikes keeps the group together into the back half of the season. It is a setting, so pick the one that fits your group.
Whichever you choose, the counting is automatic. Picks lock at kickoff, results come off the live feed, and eliminations happen on their own — nobody has to tell a friend they are out.
The money stays between you
Payment tracking and payout splits are built in. Players pay the commissioner directly — the money never passes through Poolr — and the pool keeps a record of who has settled up so nobody has to chase it in a group chat.