Caleb Wilfinger
Show Bio
At long last, the 2022 NFL season is finally here. The battle for the Lombardi Trophy begins this week, and won’t let up until Super Bowl LVII on February 12, 2023. But before we can think about the Super Bowl, there’s an entire season of football for us to enjoy.
We’re all excited for the games, but the games within the games are equally as fun. One of the most popular season-long games is the survivor pool, which doesn’t require exceptional handicapping as much as it requires strategy and adaptability.
But before we get into our favorite survivor pool picks for Week 1 of the NFL season, let’s go over how survivor pools work.
Don’t miss our NFL picks for EVERY Week 1 game
Odds available at DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publishing.
How does an NFL survivor pool work?
For those of you who have never played survivor or are unfamiliar with how it works, the concept is simple: go the entire NFL regular season without incorrectly picking the outcome of a game. This sounds daunting, but you just need to select one game per week, which makes things easier. If you pick the winner correctly, you move on to the next week and the goal is to be the last player standing in your pool.
There’s just one catch: you can only pick each team once per season. This is where strategy comes in. It would be easy enough to pick the Bills every week, but you will need to find 17 other winners throughout the season to finish a perfect 18-0.
Strategy for Week 1 of your NFL survivor pool
In past years we have given a few different recommendations for games to pick and ones to avoid each week. But survivor pools come in different sizes and the strategy for outlasting your coworkers in an 8-person office pool is vastly different from that of a national pool that hundreds of thousands of Americans can enter before the season starts.
In a smaller pool, particularly early in the season, it’s important to last week-to-week and see if any of your competitors drop before making any risky moves. In a larger pool it’s much more important to try to separate yourself from the pack to gain an edge, as it does you no good to pick the same team as everyone else whether that team wins or loses, so you’ll definitely need to take some more chances early on in order to make a move and better position yourself for the end.
Here are our favorite picks for your NFL survivor pool this weekend.
Best survivor pick: 49ers ML (-295) over Bears
The Bears are one of the worst teams in football and have a nightmare matchup ahead of them on Sunday. San Francisco has one of the league’s best front sevens, while Chicago’s offense line is near the bottom. That won’t help Chicago quarterback Justin Fields, who ranked 35th in accuracy when under pressure in 2021. I’m bullish on Trey Lance and think that he won’t have too much trouble against a middling Bears defense. More importantly, the 49ers have a very difficult schedule; they have to play in a tough NFC West and play 3 games against the AFC West this season. Therefore, there aren’t many points on their schedule where I’d feel comfortable backing the 49ers in a survivor pool situation.
Read our full 49ers vs Bears preview.
Alternate pick: Broncos ML (-275) over Seahawks
While I’d prefer to use the 49ers in this survivor pool setting, the Broncos are also a viable option. It goes without saying that Russell Wilson will be extremely focused on knocking off his former team in emphatic fashion. In his first game with the Broncos, Wilson has plenty of weapons at his disposal, and I can’t see a bottom-tier Seattle defense stopping him. On the other side, it’s hard to have any confidence in Geno Smith, who shouldn’t be a starting NFL quarterback in 2022. The Broncos play in the difficult AFC West, so I’d prefer to use them as a survivor pick in a non-conference game.
Read our full Broncos vs Bears preview.
Value pick: Saints ML (-230) over Falcons
While the Saints are 5.5-point favorites against one of the worst teams in the NFC, this is still a divisional rivalry. This is part of why I also steered away from backing the Colts in Houston against the Texans. Historically, divisional underdogs excel in Week 1, which makes sense given the familiarity between the teams, coaching staffs, etc. However, given that the Saints are only projected for 8-9 wins this season, there’s value on using New Orleans in your survivor pool to open the season. This way if the Saints win, you’ll still have every playoff team from last season available to use at your disposal, plus a litany of other teams who may have favorable matchups later in the year. For that reason, I had to include the Saints as a viable option.
Read our full Saints vs Falcons preview.
Pickswise is the home of free NFL Picks and NFL Odds. Check out the latest NFL Prop Bets and NFL Parlays as well as expert NFL Underdog Picks and NFL Computer Picks.
