As a longtime survivor pool player — and one-time winner — I’m thrilled that we have added survivor pool coverage to our industry-best suite of NFL tools.
In the old days, before the season started, I would manually build out a table with every NFL team’s projected chance of winning every game of the season. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, but a valuable one for survivor contests.
In survivor pools, the aim is simple: pick one team each week, and if they win, you survive. However, you can use each team only once. That means finding the optimal spot to use the best teams in the league is important to avoid being in a tough position later in the season.
Be sure to check out all the updates we made for the 2026-2027 NFL season to our Season-Long, Best Ball, and Survivor tools.
Being able to visualize each team’s odds at various points is crucial, as it helps you avoid situations where you can’t use any of the week’s strong favorites. Our new tool does exactly that — plus includes the projected popularity of each team for the current week, as well as their aggregate “future value” at a glance:
The tool also allows you to mark which teams you’ve already used, eliminating them from the full season table:
New for 2026, the tool also allows you to save multiple entries, allowing you to plan different strategies for the season based on your pool rules, size, and any potential hedging you plan on doing.
Before we get into my favorite Week 1 options, let’s touch on some general survivor pool strategy.
General Strategy
Much like daily fantasy sports, survivor pools are more about overall strategy than predicting the outcome of football games.
While the obvious goal is to survive as long as possible, the actual aim is to survive longer than your opponents. Most pools pay out only to the first-place finisher, with the prize pool chopped in case multiple entrants last the entirety of the season.
That means not all winning weeks are created equal, as advancing on a week where other entries fail is more valuable. That gives us a third variable to consider in our selections. Not only are the team’s odds of winning and future value important, but their popularity is as well.
If you can fade a popular team with strong future value and advance, it’s a double-whammy of leverage. Not only were you unique this week, but you’ll also be able to use a team that most of the field doesn’t have later in the season.
It’s also vital to consider your pool’s settings and size. Some pools have different rule sets, including weeks with multiple picks, whether ties count as a win or not, and even potentially opportunities to return following a loss. For this column I’ll be assuming a standard rule set, where one loss is an elimination and there are no multi-pick weeks.
Pool size is also important. Using our tool, we can do some back-of-the-envelope math to figure out the rough odds of surviving all season using the best available option. Based on my estimates, about 1% of the field is likely to last 17 weeks, and about half of those make it all 18 weeks. That means pools of 100 entrants or less are likely to wrap up before the end of the season, so the strategy is different based on pool size.
What that means for players is that small-field contests are all about maximizing the odds to advance, even at the cost of future value. Saving a team for Week 17 in a pool that wraps up in Week 15 is obviously pointless. On top of that, it’s also less important to be unique. If we expect a solo winner, there’s no expected-value benefit to being the only one to pick a team.
On the other hand, we want to be riskier in large-field contests. Hypothetically, I’d rather have a 10% chance of winning the contest solo than a 25% chance of sharing it five ways, so taking riskier picks and hoping for big favorites to fall is worth the gamble. Plus, those typically result in saving more future value, which not only gives you safer options down the line but also provides a second chance to be unique.
In this space, I’ll be giving out my favorite picks for large-field public contests like those found on DraftKings, as well as options for smaller pools like you might play in with friends or coworkers, since the strategy changes tremendously based on how long you’ll need to survive to win.
Here’s another sneak peek of what the tool shows, plus dark mode:
Week 1 Picks
Top Option: Jacksonville Jaguars
While normally I divide my picks in this article into large-field and small-field contest options, that doesn’t seem necessary this week. Regardless of contest size, the clear top option in Week 1 is the Jacksonville Jaguars.
They have the second-best win odds on the slate, trailing only the Chargers. In exchange for giving up a little less than 4% of implied win probability, you get to save a team with nearly triple the future value, all while being on a less-popular team.
The Jaguars are heavy favorites (65% or higher) just two more times this season: Week 8 and Week 12. Week 8 features six teams more likely to win – at least one of which you’ll almost certainly have. Week 12 has the Jaguars second to the Bengals, but there’s a very strong chance that plenty will change between now and then.
The one caveat to this pick is that entries in contests that require a second pick for Week 12 – typically restricted to the Thanksgiving Eve-Black Friday five-game slate – should consider saving Jacksonville. While they aren’t part of the smaller slate, having them available eases the pressure on that week.
Outside of that special case, I’m comfortable taking the Jaguars regardless of field size – though I’ll be taking a big swing with another team in contests where I have multiple entries.
Contrarian Option: Las Vegas Raiders
It’s hard to feel great about the Raiders’ chances in this – or any other – game. I suppose starting Kirk Cousins over Fernando Mendoza is probably a short-term boost, but even still, Las Vegas is favored in just one game between now and Week 15.
Naturally, that game is game 1, where they host the Dolphins. Miami is a front-runner for the worst team in the league this season (though it’s hotly contested), making this something of a “now or never” spot for the Raiders. We have their future value at 0.1, thanks to them being slight favorites in Weeks 16 and 17, though there are potentially better options even then.
By rostering the Raiders, we’re saving the Chargers and Jaguars, both of which have better future value, all while taking a shot on a team that’s expected to be picked less than 10% of the time. If either the Chargers or Jaguars lose, it’s a massive blow to the field, and entries with the Raiders (provided they win) would see a huge uptick in value.
However, even if all three of those teams win (or four, if we want to include the moderately popular Lions), there’s still value to using Las Vegas. By not making the popular pick now, you’ll also be contrarian down the line, since you’ll be able to use the popular Week 1 pick(s) later on.
They’re too risky for anyone playing in just one or two survivor pools, but for junkies like me with ten or so entries, it’s worth having some exposure to them.
Pictured: Trevor Lawrence
Photo Credit: Imagn
