The Athletic has live coverage of NFL Week 1 games.Welcome to Week 1 of another new NFL survivor pool season!The timing of this year’s kickoff couldn’t be better: Coming off a long holiday weekend — in the United States, anyway — we only have to wait two days for real football. The opening slate features a full 16 games with plenty of questions left unanswered after a pretty mundane preseason schedule. Not to worry, we’re here to help!Let’s run through our overall strategy for Week 1, then dive into chalky and contrarian picks.NFL survivor pool strategyRenee: My advice for Week 1 is the same year after year: Make it to Week 2 -- don’t prove how clever you are by fading an obvious favorite that might have a good Week 12 matchup.A lot of us are pretty good at evaluating individual NFL players, in real life or fantasy football, but we tend to make more mistakes in evaluating team offenses and defenses this early in the season. That is to say, what we think is a cake later-season matchup might turn out to be surprisingly difficult in the coming months.Did you have the 2025 Seattle Seahawks as a juggernaut on both sides of the ball early last September? Me neither. So we learn as we go, but we still have to start somewhere, right?For me, that comes back to the individual talent. Some teams clearly have more of it than others, and I’ll be staying away from teams with less proven success, less chemistry (between players and coaches), and more uncontrolled variables (such as weather and time zone if they're on the road). Of course, that’s all baked into the betting lines, a north star for any survivor player -- and both of my Week 1 picks are decent betting favorites. I’ll explain why they’re my favorites below.Can the Seahawks fend off the Rams in the NFC West?Andrew DestinAdam: I completely agree with Renee. Just get to the next week.In any given season, there are only a handful of teams I comfortably believe will be either really, really good or really, really bad at the start. Every other team is in that middle ground where we're waiting a few weeks to see how much of a contender or pretender they are.There are a few matchups that are easy to remove from your menu of picks. You’re not taking the Bills or Texans with Buffalo favored by 1.5 points in Houston. You’re not taking the Seattle Seahawks or New England Patriots in the Super Bowl rematch. You’re not taking the Kansas City Chiefs or Denver Broncos in an AFC West steel cage match.But it’s not just the powerhouse teams or contenders playing each other that should be a no-go this week. Do you really feel comfortable with the Pittsburgh Steelers or Atlanta Falcons in a battle of new coaches and new systems where you have no idea what they’re going to look like? The Miami Dolphins and Las Vegas Raiders might both stink and be teams you want to pick against as the season goes on, but how do you feel confident picking one over the other in a head-to-head opener? I’m not rolling that dice. And you shouldn't, either.