Week 14 represented another tough week for survivor pool participants, with one of the top picks of the week, the Pittsburgh Steelers, losing a second straight game to a 2-10 team. In addition, the Dolphins fell at home as huge favorites on Monday night -- imagine saving them all season and then going out in that game. The Packers were another team that may have eliminated people in survivor after the Giants somehow won a third straight game on Monday. The two Monday upsets made it a total of eight games out of 15 where the underdog won this week.

If you're still alive after all of that, congrats. If our survivor entry hadn't perished in Week 13, we would've squeaked by with a win by the Ravens in what was surprisingly a competitive game, and hopefully others were able to get by with them and not turn to our second option, the Steelers. Our third pick, the Browns, also handled their business, while we were right to steer you away from the Texans in the intro of last week's article.

When looking at your options for Week 15, 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 get into our top options below, but I would avoid using the Browns against the Bears.

The line for Bears-Browns looks like it might tip over a field goal, and that's going to put the game in play for survivors. And I get it, considering how good the Browns defense typically looks at home. But that unit gave up four touchdowns to a limited Trevor Lawrence last week, albeit two of them on short-field drives, and it was on the offense to go out and win the game, which it did. 

However, the Bears defense has been on a much better run than the Jaguars, checking in as one of the best run defenses in the league for the season while improving against the pass after getting healthy. They shut out the Lions in the second half last week while holding a very good offense to 4.2 yards per play, and they could do something similar against a Browns offense that probably isn't as good as it looked last week. They also lost another tackle to a season-ending injury last week, and they found out yesterday Jedrick Wills won't be back this season as well. Center Ethan Pocic is also managing an injury, which could make things even tougher for the Browns up front.

All that makes for what could be a low-scoring game where a good Bears rushing offense does enough to get the lead and the Bears defense shuts down an offense that played over its head last week. If that happens, the Browns could sink a few of the remaining shrinking list of survivors.

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. Let's dig in.

What are the best options to use in survivor pools in Week 15? 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!