As Week 7 of the NFL season looms, the elite teams to choose from in your Survivor Pool might be dwindling. But there are capable teams to back, and picking them at the right time is key. Lasting deep into the season isn’t about just picking the biggest favorite each week. And that strategy doesn’t work anyway — the Vikings were 16.5-point favorites and were routed at home by the winless Bills in Week 3. So before making your NFL Week 7 Survivor Pool picks, you’ll want to hear what SportsLine’s Mike Tierney has to say. A national sportswriter whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, he has reported from seven Super Bowls. He has his finger on the pulse of the league. 

Tierney excels both against the spread and straight up. The past two seasons, he has hit on nearly 65 percent of his straight-up NFL office pool picks (330-180-2), beating the vast majority of experts on NFLPickWatch.com. 

Last week, Tierney went with the Packers, who got a Mason Crosby field goal as time expired to upend the 49ers 33-30. The week before, he backed the Panthers, who used a 63-yard field goal on the game’s final play to edge the Giants 33-31. The week before, he offered up a pair of options, depending on which was available on your docket. Both were victorious. 

Tierney finished a near-perfect 13-2 on his Week 4 straight-up picks and is 32-13 in the past three weeks. Now, Tierney has studied the matchups and locked in his optimal Week 7 NFL survivor pool pick, in which you need to pick one team each week to win but cannot select the same team twice in a season. 

Tierney is confident most entrants have already used their Rams pick (they host the 49ers on Sunday), so he’s backing another team. We can tell you it’s not Los Angeles’ other franchise, the Chargers, who take on the struggling Titans in London. L.A. is favored by 6.5 points. 

Tierney knows the Chargers’ seventh-ranked defense should feast on a Titans offense that ranks 30th in total yards and has allowed 20 quarterback sacks, including 11 last week to the Ravens. Tennessee has a combined QB rating of 77.1, fourth worst in the NFL, and its 14.5 points per game are ahead of only the Cardinals (13.7) and Bills (12.7). 

But the Titans have been an inconsistent wild card all season. They’ve lost two straight, managing just 12 points the past two weeks, falling at at Buffalo 13-12 before getting shut out 21-0 to the Ravens on Sunday. Before that, however, Tennessee beat the Texans, Jaguars and Eagles in succession. 

There’s also the location that gives Tierney pause. The game will be played at Wembley Stadium 

“If there is a risk, it’s the game site — London,” Tierney told SportsLine. “Los Angeles did not return home after drubbing the Browns on Sunday in Cleveland, electing to train there before a long flight on Thursday.” 

Instead, Tierney has identified a team that is certainly not on most Survivor Pool radars yet. Despite a mediocre start to the season, the time to pick this team is right now, and he’s sharing his play over at SportsLine. 

So which team is a must-back in your Week 7 survivor pool? Visit SportsLine now to see which team will survive and advance, all from the man who went 166-88-2 in straight-up office pool picks last season and 32-13 the last three weeks alone.