NFL Survivor Pool

For those who don't know what a Survivor Pool is, you pick one team each week. If that team wins its game outright (no spread involved) you survive and advance to the next week. The catch is, you cannot use the same team twice throughout the season. Combined margin of victory is the tiebreaker, although it seldom comes to that, so I don't think much about it when making a pick.
Week 1, I picked the Dolphins, and won, due to them beating the Redskins. I think it is far too easy to use the big boys like New England, Green Bay etc. I am thinking about taking New Orleans at home over Tampa. Other teams that crossed my mind are Pittsburgh at home in an early kickoff vs San Francisco (who is playing a short week, with a cross country flight and an 10AM equivalent kickoff), but I might want to keep the Steelers in my back pocket for later, Cincinnati over San Diego (same cross country, early kickoff issues), and as an outlier, potentially taking a team like Chicago at home vs Arizona who will be without their top RB.

Should I stick with my gut of New Orleans, or do you have some other options, perhaps one I haven't listed

Quote: Gabes22

For those who don't know what a Survivor Pool is, you pick one team each week. If that team wins its game outright (no spread involved) you survive and advance to the next week. The catch is, you cannot use the same team twice throughout the season. Combined margin of victory is the tiebreaker, although it seldom comes to that, so I don't think much about it when making a pick.
Week 1, I picked the Dolphins, and won, due to them beating the Redskins. I think it is far too easy to use the big boys like New England, Green Bay etc. I am thinking about taking New Orleans at home over Tampa. Other teams that crossed my mind are Pittsburgh at home in an early kickoff vs San Francisco (who is playing a short week, with a cross country flight and an 10AM equivalent kickoff), but I might want to keep the Steelers in my back pocket for later, Cincinnati over San Diego (same cross country, early kickoff issues), and as an outlier, potentially taking a team like Chicago at home vs Arizona who will be without their top RB.

Should I stick with my gut of New Orleans, or do you have some other options, perhaps one I haven't listed

I would expect over half of the selectors to take New Orleans next week.

Basic strategy says, pick the team playing against Jacksonville!

Worked almost ALL of last year for me!!

I will use NO for my sucide pool this week. Spread, I am still thinking.

Quote: BedWetterBetter

Basic strategy says, pick the team playing against Jacksonville!

Worked almost ALL of last year for me!!

I agree with the sentiment behind this 100%.

You want to set yourself up to pick AGAINST weak teams as opposed to merely picking strong teams. If you consider that PIT/SF are roughly equal opponents, but then give PIT a bit of an edge for being better rested and at home, you're still looking at, what, 60-70% probability of advancing?

New Orleans is already a much bigger favorite than PIT, so that should tell you something. In my opinion, the best strategy is to pick the biggest spread with a favorite that you've not yet used, and if that favorite isn't even one of the Top 10 teams, (and NO is probably not) all the better.