why are you so confused about the deadline? it's a standard yahoo deadline.

if you want to pick a thursday game, that pick has to be locked in before kickoff, but the picks still aren't revealed until sunday at 1pm est.

my main reason for not taking ATL isn't to save them for their future value, it's because if they happen to lose I imagine half my pool will be knocked out, which doubles my equity in the pool.

If I take them along with half the pool, and they win, and we assume 1 of tb/mia/nyj/sf lose, and only 1 person in my pool was on that specific team that lost, my equity is only increased by 10% (10 are remaining in my pool)

keeping ATL for later is just an added value.

Imagine this scenario...

There are 100 people in your pool. The Packers are 95% to win. Everyone in your pool takes them. Every other team in the league is somehow favored to lose.

You'd still be better off taking a team favored to lose because you can win the pool right there. Say the team you take only wins 48% of the time. The Packers lose 5% of the time.

Your odds to win the pool in this scenario are 2.4% that week are 2.4% - as an added bonus if your team wins and the Packers do as well, there's still 100 people in your pool, but you're the only one with the Packers remaining that means in future weeks you'll have an option that they all don't.

If you take the Packers like everybody else, a 1 in 100 chance to win the pool makes you have a 1% chance to win the pool. You're more than doubling your chances to win by taking an underdog while everyone else in your pool takes 95% favorite.

That is an extreme example! No team is ever 95% to win, and never is every other team in the league going to be favored to lose. That means you'll be even better off than just 2.4x your odds to win by not taking the heavily picked favourite.