During Jeremy Collins' three times playing Survivor, he got the chance to compete against some of the most respected players in the show's history. For example, Jeremy has fought to win seasons that featured people like "Boston" Rob Mariano, Sandra Diaz-Twine, Tony Vlachos, Parvati Shallow, Natalie Anderson, Kim Spradlin, and Yul Kwon.
On top of playing during the same seasons as almost all of Survivor's all-time greats, Jeremy is a former winner who prevailed during one of the most intense seasons ever. Given everything that Jeremy has experienced as a Survivor player, there are very few people's whose take on the game should be taken more seriously than his. With that in mind, it is fascinating to see who Jeremy thinks the best Survivor player ever is.
Jeremy Collins labeled Tony Vlachos the "best Survivor player in the world"
Since March 2023, new episodes of On Fire with Jeff Probst: The Official Survivor Podcast have been released after each episode of the show that inspired the podcast first airs. For Survivor 49, Jeff Probst, Jeremy Collins, and Jay Wolff are co-hosting the podcast together. When the trio was reacting to the first episode of Survivor 49, Jay asked Jeremy if he thought being chaotic is a good strategy. While answering that question, Jeremy called Tony Vlachos the best Survivor player ever.
"Tony [Vlachos] is the, in my opinion, Tony is the best Survivor player in the world."Jeremy Collins
As interesting as that comment alone was from Jeremy, it was even more fascinating to hear him contrast how different he and Tony are as players. To be specific, Jeremy stated that being chaotic doesn't work for him while recognizing that causing mayhem is a pivotal part of what makes Tony the best Survivor player of all-time. It was while comparing himself to Tony that he called the two-time winner the best.
"For my game, I don't do the chaos thing, but chaos works for some people. Tony is the, in my opinion, Tony is the best Survivor player in the world. And his game thrives on chaos. So it works for Tony. It doesn't work for me."
As soon as those words left Jeremy's lips, Jeff Probst reacted and underlined how meaningful those comments were. "Wow, that is a giant statement you just said. Listen, I thought you were gonna put a qualifier around it. No qualifiers." In response, Jeremy joked about not wanting Tony to learn about the compliment. After complimenting Tony's strategy as "crazy" in a good way, Jeremy conceded that the two-time winner's style of playing Survivor can cause him to "crash and burn."
"Don't tell, Tony's not gonna hear this. So this is just us talking right now. This is just us three. Nobody else is listening to this. But I think Tony's game is crazy. Now, he does crash and burn. He can go out real early. But his chaos gameplay works for him, you know?"
Based on Jeremy's comments about him, it is great that Tony has been open to returning to Survivor. The conversation about Tony's greatness ended with Jeff summarizing what future players should learn from Jeremy's comments about the "best Survivor player in the world."
"I wanna stick with this for a second because Jeremy just said two really interesting things. So far, the best part of this podcast is what he just said. Number one, here's a great player in Jeremy saying, who I think is the greatest player of all time is Tony. And that Tony's game is chaos based. And then the other thing you said is, and he often crashes and burns. And this is what we try to tell new players all the time. You are almost certainly going to lose. Because almost everybody loses. Yes. That should free you up to play your version of Tony. It doesn't mean you have to play a chaos game, but it does mean you have to play big because that's how you become great."