NFL Survivor Pool Week 1
One pick. Eighteen weeks. Do not blow it on the first one.
Week 1 is the strangest week of the survivor season. Every team is available, every player is alive, and nobody has watched a real snap yet. It is also the week that trains the habit for the other seventeen: pick a team you can afford to lose, pick it before it locks, and save your best for later.
Here is the full 2026 Week 1 slate with kickoff times, how to think about your first pick, and how to get a pool running before Wednesday, September 9 at 8:20 PM ET.
The Week 1 slate
All times Eastern. Picks lock at each game's kickoff.
Wednesday, September 9
- New England Patriots at Seattle SeahawksFinal, Seattle Seahawks won
Thursday, September 10
- San Francisco 49ers at Los Angeles RamsFinal, San Francisco 49ers won
Sunday, September 13
- Atlanta Falcons at Pittsburgh SteelersFinal, Pittsburgh Steelers won
- Baltimore Ravens at Indianapolis ColtsFinal, Baltimore Ravens won
- Buffalo Bills at Houston TexansFinal, Buffalo Bills won
- Chicago Bears at Carolina PanthersFinal, Chicago Bears won
- Cleveland Browns at Jacksonville JaguarsFinal, Jacksonville Jaguars won
- New Orleans Saints at Detroit LionsFinal, Detroit Lions won
- New York Jets at Tennessee TitansFinal, New York Jets won
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Cincinnati BengalsFinal, Cincinnati Bengals won
- Arizona Cardinals at Los Angeles ChargersFinal, Arizona Cardinals won
- Green Bay Packers at Minnesota VikingsFinal, Minnesota Vikings won
- Miami Dolphins at Las Vegas RaidersFinal, Las Vegas Raiders won
- Washington Commanders at Philadelphia EaglesFinal, Philadelphia Eagles won
- Dallas Cowboys at New York GiantsFinal, New York Giants won
Monday, September 14
- Denver Broncos at Kansas City ChiefsFinal, Kansas City Chiefs won
How to think about your Week 1 pick
Do not spend a top team in Week 1
You need 18 winners out of 32 teams, and each team can only be used once. The two or three teams that look like the class of the league in September will have plenty of easy weeks later, when the field has thinned and the options are fewer. Week 1 is where you find the safe-enough pick, not the best one. Save the elite teams for when you need them.
Preseason information is the thinnest of the year
Nobody has seen these teams play a real game yet. New coaches, new quarterbacks, rookies, and rebuilt lines all look the same on paper. Week 1 upsets feel random because the information everyone is picking from is mostly guesswork. Give yourself margin: a solid team at home against a team in transition beats a flashy pick on a hunch.
Home and rested beats road and rushed
In a week with no injuries to weigh and no form to read, the structural edges matter more than usual. Home field, a settled quarterback, and continuity on the coaching staff are the boring advantages that hold up. Teams with a new starting quarterback on the road are the classic Week 1 trap.
Mind the Thursday lock
Each pick locks at its own game's kickoff. If you take a team playing Thursday night, your Week 1 is decided before the weekend starts and you cannot change it once the game begins. That is fine if you believe in the pick, but do not let the early game rush you into it. The Sunday slate has far more options.
Small pool: play safe. Big pool: think about the crowd
In a group chat pool of ten, the goal in Week 1 is simply to be alive in Week 2, so take the safest team you are willing to burn. In a pool with hundreds of entries, being different starts to matter: if most of the field takes the same team and it loses, the survivors are whoever zigged. Know which pool you are in before you pick.
Write down your plan for the first four weeks
You do not need to map all 18 weeks, but sketching Weeks 1 through 4 keeps you from burning two good teams back to back. Look at who plays weak opponents at home over the next month and spread your best options across those weeks instead of front-loading them.
See where the field went
Once a Week 1 game kicks off, the live picks page shows what share of Outpick players took each team, and once the game goes final, who survived. Nothing is revealed before kickoff, so nobody can copy the crowd, which is the same rule the app enforces inside every pool.
That page is the honest version of the "pick percentages" grids other sites put behind a paywall. No odds, no lines, just real picks from real pools.
Getting a pool started before kickoff
A survivor pool that starts in Week 1 closes to new members the moment the first game kicks off. Anyone joining later would have every team available while the rest of the pool has already burned one, so the door shuts to keep it fair. That means the commissioner job for Week 1 is simple: create the pool, share the invite code in the group chat, and nag everyone to join before Thursday night.
In Outpick that takes about a minute. Create a pool, set the mulligans (zero for strict survivor, one or two if your group wants a second life), and send the code. Picks lock themselves at kickoff, results grade automatically, and standings update without anyone touching a spreadsheet.
Missed the Thursday cutoff? No problem. A pool created after Week 1 starts fresh from the current week for everyone in it, so a Week 2 pool is just as fair as a Week 1 pool. If you would rather skip the commissioner role entirely, the free house pools are open to anyone until their first kickoff.
Get your pool in before Thursday night.
Create a pool, share the code, make your Week 1 pick. Free to play, picks lock at kickoff, standings update themselves.
