While I've made my mark picking NFL games against the spread, there's something to be said for a competition that asks you to just pick outright winners. That's where NFL survivor pools come into play. In a survivor pool, contestants are asked to pick the winner of one game a week of their choosing. Sound simple? The catch is that once you back a team, you cannot use them again all season. The pool winner is the person who can correctly predict a winner the longest, with a single loss eliminating the contestant from the pool.

There are different schools of thought when it comes to strategizing for a survivor pool. Do you try and plan to use who you think are the top 18 teams (one per week), knowing that there are surprise teams (good and bad) every year? Do you focus on using the teams that have the highest floor (i.e., Bills, Chiefs, Buccaneers) early while the quality of most of the other NFL teams is becoming more apparent? Do you dive deeper into the schedule to see if you can pick up an edge in a matchup that may not look as good on paper otherwise?

I've applied those strategies and a few others to the 2022 NFL schedule to build some options to use in NFL survivor pools. I'll highlight the path I think is best below, but I'll also include the other options in case you really like how one turned out and want to plan your survivor pool strategy around it. I also go into each week of the schedule to reveal the best options based on matchups and other additional factors.

Why listen to me? Well, I'm 445-378-24 on ATS picks over the last five years and even better with my top five picks each week, going 329-250-21 (56.8%) 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 2022? ... Join SportsLine right now to see NFL Survivor Pool 2022 strategy from the expert who's 445-378-24 on ATS picks from 2017-21, returning $2,542 to $100 players!