Week 2 of Splash Sports’s “The Big Splash” survivor pool
is in the books, and it’s a rough one to write up: both of our remaining entries went down in the same game, and all three of Scott’s entries are now eliminated just two weeks into an 18-week season.
What Changed
- Cleveland Browns 23, Tampa Bay Buccaneers 19 (Sept. 20, 2026, at Raymond James Stadium) — the Buccaneers lost a game they’d been favored in at 78% win probability heading into Sunday, on a night delayed more than two hours by a lightning stoppage with 2:00 left in the fourth quarter.
- Both Entry A and Entry C had moved onto the Buccaneers together after last week’s decorrelation decision, so both entries were eliminated by the same result.
- Entry B remains eliminated from Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to the Jets); no change there.
- All three of Scott’s entries in the pool are now out. Weeks 3-18 below show the pre-Week-2 season-long plan for reference only — no picks remain live.
Entry A picked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at a carried 78% win probability — a number we’d been raising all week as the market kept drifting toward Tampa (76% on Sept. 15, 78% by Saturday’s final check) on the strength of Cleveland’s thin offense in its Week 1 loss. The alternative we’d seriously weighed and rejected earlier in the week was pulling forward a stronger team already earmarked for a double-pick week — the Los Angeles Rams (93% in their actual Week 6 slot) or Baltimore Ravens (87% in Week 16) — but under the season-long model those teams are worth roughly 1.3-1.7x as much saved for a double-pick week, so shaving a few points off an already-favored Week 2 pick would have been a bad trade even with hindsight now showing the Buccaneers lost. The board played out: Baker Mayfield went 20-of-34 for 182 yards with a touchdown and an interception, Bucky Irving ran for 89 yards, and Tampa Bay still lost 19-23 after a holding penalty stalled their potential game-winning drive following the weather delay. Entry A is eliminated.
Entry B has carried no picks since its Week 1 elimination (Titans lost 10-23 to the Jets) and this week doesn’t change that — it’s included here only so the full three-entry picture stays visible in one place.
Entry C’s path to the Buccaneers is the more interesting one in hindsight. Its original Week 2 pick was the Atlanta Falcons, at a discounted number after their line flipped against them following a rough Cooper Rush start in Week 1. Rather than ride out a sub-50% pick, we made the deliberate, explicitly-flagged call to move Entry C onto Entry A’s stronger Buccaneers number instead — the expected-value math favored it clearly (a decorrelated expected 1.20 combined survivors versus 1.52 combined by matching the better team), at the cost of raising the both-entries-die-together risk from roughly 13% to 24%. That is exactly the outcome that happened: the correlation risk we accepted on paper showed up in the box score. We’d make the same call again with the same information — the expected-value case was real, not a mistake in hindsight, it’s simply the tail outcome that a roughly 1-in-4 correlated-bust risk was always going to hit sometimes. Entry C is eliminated.
The Full 18-Week Roadmap
Shown below for reference as the season-long plan that was in place heading into Week 2. No further picks are live for any entry.
| Wk | Entry A | Entry B | Entry C |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Las Vegas Raiders (vs Miami Dolphins, 60%) — WON (27-13) | Tennessee Titans (vs New York Jets, 53%) — LOST, eliminated (10-23) | Jacksonville Jaguars (vs Cleveland Browns, 79%) — WON (34-10) |
| 2 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers (vs Cleveland Browns, 78%) — LOST, eliminated (19-23)†† | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | Tampa Bay Buccaneers (vs Cleveland Browns, 78%) — LOST, eliminated (19-23)‡†† |
| 3 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 4 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 5 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 6 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 7 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 8 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 9 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 10 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 11 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 12 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 13 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 14 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 15 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 16 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 17 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
| 18 | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) | ELIMINATED — Week 1 (Titans lost 10-23 to Jets) | ELIMINATED — Week 2 (Buccaneers lost 19-23 to Browns) |
† Revised Sept. 19 from 76% to 78% ahead of kickoff, per live-market checks against Kalshi and Covers.com. ‡ Entry C moved from the Atlanta Falcons to the Buccaneers on Sept. 16, matching Entry A, after the Falcons line flipped against us — see that week’s post for the full expected-value reasoning. †† Final: Browns 23, Buccaneers 19 (Sept. 20, 2026), confirmed via buccaneers.com, CBS Sports and ESPN. This eliminated both Entry A and Entry C; combined with Entry B’s Week 1 elimination, all three of Scott’s entries in the pool are now out.
What’s Next
There’s no pick to make or correct this week — the results are simply what they are. The $3,000,000 guaranteed pool continues for the rest of the field through the remainder of the 18-week season, but none of Scott’s three entries have a stake in it going forward. Barring further instructions changing the scope of this job, this concludes the regular weekly research-and-publish cycle for The Big Splash for the 2026 season. Thanks for following along.