NFL Survivor pool 2023 strategy: Building a winning plan, plus schedule breakdown and alternative options

If you join a survivor pool, all you have to do is pick one outright winner every week. But the catch is that you can't use a team more than once all season, so if you lean on the teams you know are good early in the year like the Chiefs and Eagles, you may be stuck having to pick amongst average or slightly above-average teams that may not have easy matchups later in the year. In order to win a survivor pool, you have to either get to the end of the season without missing a single pick, or be the last person remaining when everyone else loses a game.

Last year, we provided a roadmap for survivor pools and continued to update strategy throughout the year. It's important to note that the strategy you adopt depends on the size of your pool. If you're playing in a pool with a handful of friends or co-workers, it's unlikely anyone is going to last the full 18 weeks, so you don't have to worry about how weekly slates look near the end of the season as much. If you're in a pool like the one hosted by Circa Sports, which features an $8 million prize pool split amongst any of the 6,000-plus participants who win, you'll have to plan for lasting the entire season, which actually includes 20 scoring periods instead of 18 as Thanksgiving and Christmas feature double-weeks for those isolated slates.

We'll try our best to address strategies for both types of pools below and give you options on which path you want to use as the season starts, knowing that key injuries and surprising/disappointing teams could mean adjusting as we check in from week to week.

Why listen to me? Well, 535-450-30 (+3532) on ATS picks over the last six years and even better with my top five picks each week, going 376-290-24 (56.5%) over the last seven years in the Westgate SuperContest.  While this doesn't involve picking against the spread, I do believe by applying the strategies I've developed to have long-term success on those picks to survivor pools, we'll be in the best position to outlast the competition.

Which weeks could trip up survivor pool competitors? And which path is the best to take to win an NFL survivor pool in 2023? ... Join SportsLine right now to see NFL Survivor Pool 2022 strategy from the expert who's 535-450-30 on ATS picks from 2017-22, returning $3,532 to $100 players!