Strategy
NFL Week 5 Pick'em: 15 Games Because Two Teams Are Off
NFL Week 5 runs Thursday 8 October through Monday 12 October, and it is 15 games, not 16. The Panthers and the Chiefs are off. Thirty teams play, so the card is an odd number for the first time this season.
That sounds like trivia until you run a pool. A 15-game card changes the math on every scoring system, and it changes it again for anyone who was tracking a team that is not on the board this week.
Week 4 finished Monday night with the Falcons beating the Saints 45-24 in New Orleans, six touchdowns for Atlanta and five of them on the ground, with Bijan Robinson at 145 yards and two scores. Atlanta hosts Baltimore on Sunday night this week.
The complete Week 5 card
Times are Eastern, from the NFL’s own Week 5 schedule page. Away team first.
Thursday, 8 October
| Time (ET) | Away | Home |
|---|---|---|
| 8:15 PM | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Dallas Cowboys |
Sunday, 11 October
| Time (ET) | Away | Home |
|---|---|---|
| 9:30 AM | Philadelphia Eagles | Jacksonville Jaguars |
| 1:00 PM | Cincinnati Bengals | Miami Dolphins |
| 1:00 PM | Las Vegas Raiders | New England Patriots |
| 1:00 PM | Minnesota Vikings | New Orleans Saints |
| 1:00 PM | Cleveland Browns | New York Jets |
| 1:00 PM | Indianapolis Colts | Pittsburgh Steelers |
| 1:00 PM | Houston Texans | Tennessee Titans |
| 1:00 PM | New York Giants | Washington Commanders |
| 1:00 PM | Chicago Bears | Green Bay Packers |
| 4:05 PM | Denver Broncos | Los Angeles Chargers |
| 4:25 PM | Detroit Lions | Arizona Cardinals |
| 4:25 PM | San Francisco 49ers | Seattle Seahawks |
| 8:20 PM | Baltimore Ravens | Atlanta Falcons |
Monday, 12 October
| Time (ET) | Away | Home |
|---|---|---|
| 8:15 PM | Buffalo Bills | Los Angeles Rams |
On bye: Carolina Panthers, Kansas City Chiefs.
The count checks out on its own, which is the nice thing about bye weeks: 32 teams minus 2 on rest is 30, and 30 teams is 15 games.
Byes are the thing to settle this week
Weeks 1 through 4 all had the full league playing. From here to the end of the regular season, somebody is always off, and three kinds of pool handle that differently.
- A straight pick’em does not care. Fifteen picks instead of sixteen, and the week resolves normally. If this is your format, the bye is a footnote.
- A confidence pool cares a lot. If people assign 1 through 16 and the card is 15 games, the top number disappears and everybody’s scale shifts. Decide now whether you are ranking 1 to 15 this week or keeping a 16-point scale with a gap. Both work. Only one of them works if half the group assumes the other.
- A survivor pool cares most. Two teams are unavailable, and for anybody saving the Chiefs for a soft matchup, this is the week that plan stops existing. Write down whether a missed pick on a bye-week team is an automatic elimination or a free pass. If you leave it unwritten, you will be arguing about it on Monday with somebody’s season on the line.
The format trade-offs are laid out in single round versus season-long pools, and the walkthrough for a new group is in how to run an NFL pick’em pool with friends.
The 9:30 AM game is back
Sunday opens at 9:30 in the morning Eastern with Eagles at Jaguars, the London game. That is 6:30 AM on the West Coast.
We went through this in the Week 4 guide, and the lesson is the same: “get your picks in Sunday morning” quietly voids one game for anyone who files at 11. The difference is that this is the second week in a row, so if you patched it last week, the patch still holds. If you got lucky last week, you are about to not get lucky.
Per-game locking handles it without anybody memorising a kickoff time. The alternative is a single deadline that sits before 9:30 AM Sunday. Our read on each is in when should pick’em picks lock.
Two things to publish before Thursday night
1. The bye rule, in writing. One line is enough. “Confidence rankings are 1 to 15 this week” or “survivor picks on bye teams are a loss” settles the whole thing in advance. The cost of writing it now is ten seconds. The cost of not writing it is a conversation nobody enjoys.
2. The Monday tiebreak. Bills at Rams closes the week at 8:15 PM ET Monday, after most of the group has stopped paying attention. In a tight table that last card decides it. Fine, as long as everyone knew.
A rhythm for the fifteen
- Thursday: the Buccaneers at Cowboys opener, on its own.
- Before Sunday: the 9:30 AM London game, because it is the one that gets lost.
- Sunday morning: the eight-game 1:00 PM block, where the week is decided.
- Sunday afternoon: the three games at 4:05 and 4:25.
- Sunday night and Monday: the last two as separate calls.
Week 5 spans five calendar days. Doing that by hand means chasing results, recomputing a shifted scale and answering the same bye-week question four times in the group chat.
Frequently asked questions
How many games are in NFL Week 5?
Fifteen. Two teams are on bye, the Panthers and the Chiefs, so 30 teams play.
When does NFL Week 5 start and end?
It starts Thursday 8 October at 8:15 PM ET and ends Monday 12 October with an 8:15 PM ET game.
Which teams are on bye in Week 5?
Carolina and Kansas City.
How do you run a confidence pool on an odd number of games?
Pick one scale and publish it before Thursday. Ranking 1 to 15 is the cleanest. Keeping a 16-point scale with one number unused also works, as long as it is the same choice for everybody.
Publish the bye rule before Thursday night. Download Quini, create your Week 5 pool, invite the group, and let the schedule, the deadlines and the live standings run themselves. Free to play, no money involved.