Eight individuals, many of whom have never met in person before, hold one of the coveted 609 remaining Circa Survivor entries left competing for $25 million.
- A veteran handicapper leads a team that has outlasted over 24,000 Circa Survivor contestants.
- The Bengals’ overtime win in Week 8 kept the dream of $25 million alive.
- Mike Davis’ strategy has been to avoid bad quarterbacks and coaches.
Led by veteran professional handicapper Mike Davis, the group, named Turn 'Em in the contest after the Discord he runs, holds stakes worth more than $41,000 heading into Week 10 of the Las Vegas sportsbook’s NFL contest that requires participants to pick one team to win each week for 20 weeks.
Once a team is picked, they’re off the board. Whoever is left after 20 weeks, including two different selections during Thanksgiving and Christmas games, they split the largest prize pool in the famed contest’s history.
Participants can have up to 10 entries at $1,000 each, but Davis’ group bought just one, and it has outlasted 24,408 contestants so far.
“We've gotten lucky,” Davis told Covers. “I feel like everybody that has advanced this far has dodged some bullets. Hopefully we can dodge bullets the rest of the way.”
Week 9 #CircaSurvivor Results ❌ 1 Eliminated ✅ 609 Survive to Week 10 💰$25,017,000 Prize up for grabs🤑 📄Week 10 Team Availability: https://t.co/EsQm5UOaaJ https://t.co/xO0mnSWSyt
— Circa Sports (@CircaSports) November 10, 2026
A lot on the line
Although Davis had been part of many different forms of handicapping in his career, he’d never tried a survivor contest until this summer. After watching Circa’s documentary on the rapidly growing contest open to everyone, Davis, who lives in Georgia, fell in love with the idea, and since it was August and everyone was starving for football, he threw an idea out on his Turn 'Em Discord to do an entry as a team.
Five of his roughly 50 Discord followers, located around the country in Washington, Texas, New York, and Louisiana, responded. They joined Davis’ brother and a hometown friend. Davis owns 23% of the entry, with the other seven claiming 11% each.
“We only have $1,000 at stake, but I don't look at it like we have $1,000 at stake,” Davis said. “I look at it like there’s $25 million on the line. I love this contest.”
Turn 'Em advances to week 10 with everyone else -- haha. My brother and I will be at Circa for next Sunday's games. We look forward to bumping into many of you. #survivor https://t.co/77tzgWV86w
— Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mikedaviswins) November 9, 2026
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Getting hooked
Davis has been handicapping for various websites since the 2000s and has also grown his brand through videos, but in his first year in Circa Survivor, he’s never been on a ride like this before.
For example, in Week 8, Davis’ group picked the Cincinnati Bengals, who were favored by nearly two touchdowns over the one-win Tennessee Titans. Half of the field was riding the favorite.
However, the Bengals and Davis found themselves in a serious sweat late, needing a Joe Burrow touchdown pass to tie with 1:17 left in the game. Cincinnati went on to win the game in overtime on a Burrow TD run.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, but I’ve never had that rush that I had at the end of that game,” Davis said. “It was just incredible.
“I just knew it was done, and I was already thinking, how can we get back into this thing because I want to be a part of it. They came back, and they won it in overtime, and it was just the biggest adrenaline rush I've ever had gambling in my whole life.”
@JeffreyBenson12 @DerekJStevens - check your mailboxes. My attorney will be in touch. I don’t deserve this!! #survivor @CircaSports https://t.co/k6OUKdczrE
— Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mikedaviswins) November 1, 2026
The group’s strategy
Davis puts an hour or two each day into researching the week’s Circa Survivor selection. The group then discusses their options, and if they can’t come to a consensus, Davis makes the final decision.
He told the group from the beginning that he wanted to stick to a specific strategy, one that has led them to pick a lot of chalk, but they’re still alive.
“We haven’t tried to do anything fancy, and the reason is I didn’t want to take a bad coach or a bad quarterback or the combination of the two, and that saved us the week that Miami went to the Jets because we were strongly considering the Jets,” Davis said.
So far this year, Turn 'Em has taken the Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, San Francisco 49ers, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots, Minnesota Vikings, Bengals, and Seattle Seahawks in the contest. Davis said they avoided early elimination in Week 1 when the Los Angeles Chargers’ loss knocked out 30% of the entries.
Week 5 was another critical week, when the Dallas Cowboys lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Thursday, and the Washington Commanders tied the New York Giants. Davis said the group highly considered two teams that would've ended their run. The Atlanta Falcons were another option. They lost to the Ravens on Monday night.
Instead, the group took the winless Texans, who got an easy victory over the Titans. Part of their success, Davis said, is because of another initial strategy.
Saving L.A.
He wanted to save the L.A. Rams – who were the preseason Super Bowl favorite – until Thanksgiving during one of those tough two-pick stretches. That has kept Turn 'Em from taking them in Week 6 when L.A. lost to the Cardinals and half of the remaining field got eliminated. They stayed alive with the Patriots beating the Jets.
Now, at 5-4, Los Angeles is far from a lock on Thanksgiving, especially against a hot Green Bay Packers team, but that’s also part of Davis’ bigger plan.
“Let's just keep advancing, and things may change as we move through the weeks, and you know, if Matthew Stafford were to get hurt, a play against the Rams would be a great play, or if anybody gets hurt,” he said. “So, we've just tried to advance each week.”
Moving forward
That last part of their strategy is likely leading the group to abandon saving the Rams. Davis said their matchup against the Cardinals, who are down to a third-string rookie quarterback, is likely too good to pass up.
He expects Turn 'Em will be taking the Puka Nacua-less Rams on Sunday to stay alive in Circa Survivor.
“I don’t like the fact that Puka's out, but I'm not a Carson Beck guy,” Davis said. “I just believe that he's a checkdown machine. I think the Rams' defense, with Myles Garrett back and looking good, should take care of them. But moving forward, who knows what happens?”
And that’s the point of Circa Survivor. With so many QB injuries across the league, Davis knows the strategy of taking favorites with good situations could dry up at some point, and he’s preparing for that difficult Thanksgiving and Christmas stretch, when a lot of remaining teams get eliminated.
“But my feeling is, if we get that far, and there’s a lot of money on the line, the entries really narrow down, we can start covering some of those (survivor selections) by taking the underdog plus the points,” Davis said. “No secret, everybody does it.”
If his group makes it to the end, they plan on being at Circa in Las Vegas, where owner Derek Stevens hosts the final entries.
“I'm looking forward to it, but we've got it mapped out,” Davis said. “I mean, it can't be that hard, right?”
Davis already knows the answer to that question. Last year, just five of the over 18,000 entries made it to the end to split $18.7 million.
