Many of the people who are still alive in survivor pools can likely thank their stars they took a risk in Week 1 and backed the Commanders against the Cardinals. Washington gutted out a win in that game, and the people who didn't take that opportunity to use the Commanders in the first week of the season likely did so last week, when they hosted an inept Giants team as huge favorites. Six Washington turnovers and a great game by Tommy DeVito (when he wasn't getting sacked) later, and using the Commanders last week meant bowing out of survivor.

We suggested the Commanders as a great play in this column as they were the one big favorite who were likely available to enough teams for it to matter, but we were lucky enough to have used them in Week 1 and not go down with the ship. Instead, the Jaguars easily took care of business for us, leaving our DraftKings survivor entry just seven weeks away from cashing. The road was made more difficult when we lost the Bengals as an option moving forward, as we had planned to use them in the next few weeks either against the Steelers this week or the Colts a few weeks later. Anyone who took a risk by burning the Bengals in a Week 5 road matchup against Arizona coming off a horrendous performance in Tennessee the previous week now looks pretty smart. We went with the Dolphins that week, and it would sure be nice to still have that arrow in our quiver.

When looking at your options for Week 12, 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. We'll dive into those pools with separate Thanksgiving/Black Friday slates to consider below, but for 18-week slates, I would avoid using the Patriots against the Giants.

It seems smart to fade the Giants coming off a win, and if you back the Patriots, you get a Bill Belichick squad coming off a bye week against probably the worst team in the league. But the Patriots themselves are also one of the worst teams in the league, and you don't ever want to back one of those teams on the road, regardless of the matchup. New England also ranks 31st in sack rate, so Tommy DeVito might have some time to get comfortable in the pocket, and we saw how effective he was against Washington when he wasn't sacked. Maybe the bye was long enough to fix New England's offensive issues, but it sounds like there's a good chance they could be changing QBs this week, and I'm not sure Bailey Zappe is the answer to their issues. You have to take risks to make it through 18 weeks of survivor, but backing a bad Patriots team on the road shouldn't be one of them.

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 12? 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!