The new NFL season features a jam-packed Week 1 that includes Lions vs. Rams, Cowboys vs. Browns, and Jets vs. 49ers on Monday Night Football! An NFL survivor pool has an exceedingly easy ruleset, but can be incredibly difficult to win. All you have to do is pick one team to win every week, but the challenge comes from not being able to use the same team more than once per season. 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.

There is a lot of value -- particularly in bigger pools -- to plotting out the entire year to figure out weeks where one team is likely to be far and away the best option, which spots will be the best for digging deeper into the pool of usable teams to find a winner and how the entire jigsaw puzzle fits together to give you the best chance for success. Some, like the $10 million Circa Survivor competition hosted by Circa Sports, include extra scoring periods for the Thanksgiving and Christmas Day slates, making planning ahead even more crucial to be sure you save one of the top options for those slates.

Whether you're in a friendly pool with a handful of people or in one of the large sportsbook-hosted pools that include thousands of entries, this is the place for you to prepare for the 2024 NFL season. We'll go through the schedule week by week to break down the best options with an additional focus on scheduling and travel positives and negatives. Then, we'll put together a few plans to consider for both 18-week and 20-week formats. In the former, I've discovered one path where I would make my pick at least seven-point favorites in every matchup based on my power ratings and home-field advantage data.

Why listen to me? I'm 636-534-34 (+4899) on ATS picks over the last seven years and even better with my top five picks each week, going 428-327-25 (56.7%) over the last nine years in the Las Vegas ATS contests. 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 this season.

In Week 1, I'm taking a little more risk "by playing a lower-tier team." This team will not be on many survivor players' radar, potentially giving its backers a huge boost. This pick could be the difference between winning your survivor pool or going home with nothing.

So which NFL survivor picks should you make for the 2024 NFL season, and which Week 1 pick could separate you from the pack? ... Join SportsLine right now to see NFL Survivor Pool 2024 strategy from the expert who's 636-534-34 on ATS picks from 2017 to 2023, returning almost 50 units!