Last week we felt pretty comfortable going with the Saints knowing that there would be an oversized portion of the field on the Browns to easily beat the Cardinals. We avoided that play with the thinking that there was enough variability in the outcome to hope a bad Browns offensive day took down a majority of the field. Both teams made it through, though it was the Saints who were actually in the most trouble, only winning by seven points despite a +5 turnover margin.

I'm happy we don't have to even think about potentially using the Saints again down the road after that effort, and we'll have other opportunities to go with the Browns if Deshaun Watson can finally find some rhythm in the offense. This week, there's an option everyone will obviously load up on in 18-week survivor pools, but using them in formats where Thanksgiving week is split into two slates is going to depend on who else you have left to use that week. We'll get more into that situation below and tell you whether it's worth it to pivot away from the consensus pick in 18-week formats.

When looking at your options for Week 10, it's important to project out the rest of the schedule (hence the point of this weekly column). It's also important to know the format of your pool, as Circa Survivor adds two standalone slates for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This week, I'm talking only to the people looking for a pivot, as I would avoid using the Bears against the Panthers on Thursday night.

If Justin Fields is ruled in for this game, we expect the market to push the Bears up to being moderate favorites against a hapless Panthers team. That will make some segment of survivor pools consider taking the rare opportunity to use a bad team in a good spot and save better teams for the rest of the season. I think that strategy can make some amount of sense, but when you do that, you don't want to go too far down the power ratings to find your bad team, as you'll only have to use 20 of the 32 teams at most. I'm not sure we're going to look back at this season and consider the Bears a top-20 team at any point, and it's possible they're among the worst the league has to offer. In games between awful teams, anything can happen, and you don't want to bank on Fields shaking off the rust immediately on a short week of prep and carrying an otherwise poor Bears offense to a win here.

Why listen to me? Well, I was 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 eight 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.

Below, you'll find my top options for this week as well as a tiered set of options for every week over the rest of the season, including breakouts for the Thanksgiving/Black Friday and Christmas slates. Let's dig in.

What are the best options to use in survivor pools in Week 10? And which teams should be saved to use later in the season? ... Join SportsLine right now to see NFL Survivor Pool strategy from the expert who's 535-450-30 on ATS picks from 2017-22, returning $3,532 to $100 players!