It's that time of year again when hope springs anew and the football-loving public collectively says, "This year I'll go all the way." I'm, of course, referring to survivor pools, a type of contest that sounds easy — until you're doing it.
That brings us to our NFL survivor pool Week 2 picks.
The concept is simple: Pick one team that wins an NFL game every week. No spreads or totals, just winners. Once you use that team, they're done — creating an element of strategy and long-term planning that makes these contests deceptively difficult.
Fortunately, we've continued our partnership with our friends at Pool Genius to make things easier. They've built slate-leading tools to help conquer a variety of pool contests, including survivor.
My favorite feature of the site is the ability to customize for your individual pool type. Factors like contest size and payout structure are huge factors in survivor contests, as smaller fields generally don't have any entries make it all 18 weeks.
To give a glimpse of how that works, throughout the season, I'll be providing their top option for small (less than 100) and large (1,000+) entry pools. Besides that, they track pick selection data to help figure out contrarian options. This is helpful in larger NFL pools since we're trying to optimize for expected value more than just odds of winning.
Finally, they use projected future spreads to assign a future value to each team — which includes considering the scarcity of strong options on certain weeks. This is crucial, as we don't want to burn the best teams when there are other strong options that week.
To get their full data, you'll need to sign up for the site. It's well worth it though, and it also includes tools for taking down the increasingly popular pick'em contests that feature massive prize pools.
NFL Survivor Pool Picks for Week 2
Large Field: Minnesota Vikings
One of the most surprising things about Week 1 of the 2025 season was the lack of major surprises. The big favorites all handled their business, and while it wasn't sweat free, most Survivor pools still have the vast majority of entrants still alive.
What that means for us is the value of taking a risk earlier in the season has gone up exponentially. Going against the grain gives us a shot to move forward while eliminating a large chunk of our competition, which increases the expected payout if you are able to survive.
Plus, the odds of the contest lasting all 18 weeks are increased by the lack of Week 1 upsets, so saving stronger teams for later in the season becomes more important — which is where the Vikings come in.
Their Week 2 home game against Atlanta is their second-best win probability game of the season, with the only better game being in London in Week 5. The games abroad are a strange enough situation that you probably want to avoid those, and there are other strong teams that week anyway.
More importantly, Minnesota isn't among the top-five teams in terms of popularity in survivor pools this week.
Statistically speaking, there's a very strong chance that at least one of the five teams used ahead of Minnesota lose this week (about 77% based on Pool Genius odds), creating an opportunity to move past a big chunk of the field.
Small Field: Arizona Cardinals
With all that said, for smaller contests the Vikings are a bit risky for my taste.
By pivoting from Minnesota to Arizona, we get a boost in moneyline odds from roughly -215 to -285, a considerable jump. Plus, with the Vikings playing on Sunday Night Football, there's the added risk of a late injury or other news breaking when it's too late to pivot to another team.
The Cardinals were a relatively popular pick in Week 1, with about 20% of the field on them for their road game in New Orleans. I was a bit wary of that spot with it being on the road, but the Cardinals return home to take on the Panthers in Week 2. That's a similar matchup in terms of opponent strength, but the home game further helps Arizona.
From a strategy standpoint, the name of the game in smaller fields is still surviving all 18 weeks. Odds are that will be enough to pick up a solo win in contests of this size, or at most split it with one other player.
The Cardinals have just one other week where they'd be in consideration as a top pick, so we aren't giving up much by rostering them now.
Plus, the only teams with better Week 2 odds are the Bills and Ravens — both of whom have much more value down the stretch as two of the NFL's best teams.
