Unfortunately Savage was most likely just a revenge vote by Ciera and Abi, the smart money would have been to go Jeremy because it’ll be harder to rally people against him while the meat shields are there (the entire point of his strategy).
Savage was the right choice. He was by far the most rigid of the Bayon group. Both Jeremy and Stephen are willing to work with the girls.
As much fun as it was to see salty Savage get idoled out, I question the choice of target by Wentworth. If you're on the outs in this game, you WANT as many fractures in the other side as you can get. You know based on your intel that there are severe fractures between Savage / Joe and Fishbach / "A Larger Core on the Other Side" - presumably Jeremy who had been with Fishbach the entire way through all tribe swaps - and pulling in Tasha and Spencer along with him. Keith and Wiglesworth are clearly happy to flip with the numbers and go deep.
It probably appears like I'm discounting Kimmi here given that she has also been with Jeremy and Stephen the entire way but if I'm logically hashing out who would have more influence between Jeremy and Kimmi to keep Fish protected from Savage I'm going to hazard a reasonable guess that it's Jeremy. Kelley herself identified that "there are 4 people running this game". Ciera rhymed off a core of Jeremy, Tasha, Savage and "Stephen or Joe?". Well... okay, maybe there's five... but there probably isn't. But at least they've already done the work of discounting Kimmi.
So as much of a dick as Savage is... and as much of a hard-on for Ciera as he has (and this was clearly a Ciera win in my books)... I think the smarter play would have been to preserve as many of those fractures as possible and keep the volatile and insecure Savage around and to instead target the stabilizing force. You want to identify that stabilizing force and target them so that the volatile forces will blame each other and crumble allowing you to reconfigure your place in the game.
It's not that Savage would be more willing to work with the girls than Jeremy. Clearly he would not. It's about removing the anchor of the alliance and sending people scattering. Getting rid of Savage doesn't accomplish that, IMO. There are PLENTY of people willing to work with Abi-Ciera-Kelley to get themselves further in the game besides Jeremy.
As for why Wentworth went after Savage instead of Jeremy... well, maybe Ciera was resistant to entertaining it in light of her documented feud with Savage. We don't know because we didn't see footage of that discussion. Had the others split the votes (the "smart" move) clearly Ciera's own neck would have been on the line but you could have agreed with her to vote for each other out of self-preservation while steering Abi to your intended target so you'd have TWO anti-Jeremy votes following the idol play (negated by the split but at least it was an angle that could work with no split). Or you could hash out with Ciera and Abi who the preferred target should be. They didn't need the 3 anti-Savage votes. They just needed two... for whichever target they went with. (And given the above intel courtesy of Ciera on Twitter, we know that they were aware no split was in play).
Wentworth had no ties to Jeremy in THIS game apart from her brief stay on the reformed Bayon after two swaps and never went to tribal with him until the merge (granted, she had none with Savage either). She does have ties to Jeremy from San Juan del Sur which is the only reason I can think of latching on to as to why she went with the decision to target Savage instead. Some pre-game nonsense might have distorted her line of thinking here.
Of course, the added benefit to that move that we have the benefit of knowing as viewers is that Jeremy has an idol himself and she would have effectively wielded her own idol to take out the other by such a play. But there was no real way for her to know who else might have one... just how they would have gone about obtaining it (during a challenge like she did). As big a move as nullifying 9 votes was... imagine nullifying 9 votes AND taking out the other person who had a hidden immunity idol at the same time.
So playing the idol was smart... I just question the target. Getting Savage out now might be cathartic for us but that stabilizing force in Jeremy is still around to keep Joe and Stephen from taking shots at each other and to keep the other 5 (Tasha, Spencer, Kimmi, Keith, Wiglesworth) in line. The other idol is still around too. That's not good.
Had Jeremy and the 2nd idol been booted Savage, Joe and Tasha would have still been tight but I think the cracks would be present to send Fish and Kimmi over to the other 3 girls and Keith, Kelly, Spencer would be in the middle of a fractured group. I don't believe that defined fracture exists in this equation. Kelley's idol sunk the colossal aircraft carrier-sized ego of Savage but the battleship of Jeremy remains unscathed. Incidentally, I want someone that's been idoled to use that as a line sometime... "you sunk my battleship".
Even boiling it down to just the 5 names of people "running this game" that Ciera noted... Savage and Joe wanted Stephen gone. This is documented. Savage and Tasha have a strong bond from Angkor which Abi is all too familiar with. Tasha made a specific point of telling Kass last week that she was NOT working with Stephen. So we have all of these people who are "running the game" clearly saying they want to take out Stephen or they're not working with Stephen but the fish fry is off. So who should you target then? I'd say the answer is obvious... the one person you think is running the game that has been with Stephen since Day 1.