Okay so this is a format I didn't know I needed until right now. Covers just ran its first NFL Touchdown Survivor pool, where their football experts went around the room drafting the touchdown plays they love most for Week 5. Like a fantasy draft. But instead of roster spots, you're picking the guy you think finds the end zone. And if he does, you survive and you move on to the next week with a fresh pick.

I love this. Straight up. It's fantasy football boiled down to its purest emotional hit, because a touchdown is the moment. It's the leap, the spike, the guy who hasn't scored since November finding paydirt in front of his mom. You don't survive a week on projected points or a smart floor. You survive because one human being crossed a painted line holding a football.

The format itself is simple. Once you use a player, he's gone from your arsenal, so you can't just ride Derrick Henry (or whoever your weekly cheat code is) into December. You have to spread your conviction around, which is where it gets fun. Every pick is a little story about who you trust.

And that's what makes the Covers draft worth reading even if you're not in a pool. You get their experts making picks in order, which means you get the reasoning, the reaches, the guy one writer takes a round too early because they believe. We've all been that person. That person is usually me. Dave Morgan would tell you I reach for players whose backstories make me cry, and he would not be wrong, but you know what, story players hit too.

If you're building your own Week 5 card from it, the useful angle is the same one I keep coming back to: situations over safety. A touchdown pick is a bet on opportunity, on goal-line work, on a coaching staff that trusts a guy when the field shrinks. Target share matters more than EPA when the ball is inside the two, and that's pretty much the entire game.

It's also just a great watch party format. My group chat is already arguing about whether we should run one of these, and the arguments started roughly forty seconds after I sent the link. Someone will take a kicker-adjacent tight end in round one. Someone will panic. Someone will be eliminated by a goal-line vulture and threaten to leave the chat. Pure chaos, and I mean that in the best way.

Go read the picks, steal the ones you like, argue about the ones you don't. And if one of these survivor pools blows up the way it probably should, don't say I didn't warn you about how invested you're about to get.