No position is more unpredictable in fantasy football than kickers. Year after year after year, no position has a lower correlation between where they're drafted before the season and where they finish after the season. No position has a lower correlation between how they score in one week and how they score in the next. No position has a lower correlation between projected points and actual points.
In addition, placekicker is the position that has the smallest spread between the best players and the middle-of-the-pack players for fantasy. Finally, most fantasy GMs will only carry one kicker at a time, which means there are a dozen or more starting kickers sitting around on waivers at any given time. Given all of this, it rarely makes sense to devote resources to the position. Instead, GMs are best served by rotating through whichever available kicker has the best weekly matchup.
Every week, I'll rank the situations each kicker finds himself in (ignoring the talent of the kicker himself) to help you find perfectly startable production off the waiver wire.
Week 14 Results
Jason Myers (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 4 XPs, 10 points)
Myers had been a disappointment in recent weeks, but it seems there's no slump so deep that even the New York Jets can't bust it. Myers missed an extra point, but still finished with 10 points, good for 5th among all kickers.
Stephen Gostkowski (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 4 XPs, 7 points)
The Titans had a pretty workmanlike day in dispatching the Jaguars, and their kicker's 7 points tied him for 13th on the week.
Ryan Succop (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 2 XPs, 8 points)
Succop missed an extra point for Tampa, but still hit enough other kicks to score 8 points, good for 10th among kickers.
Matt Gay (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)
The closest thing to a disappointment among our recommended options, Gay only scored 6 points, but in a relatively down week for kickers that still was around average, finishing 17th overall.
Joey Slye (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)
The Panthers were certainly disappointed by this week's game outcome, but anyone who rostered their kicker wasn't; Slye's nine points were the 7th-best total of any kicker.
Results To Date
To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 70 weekly recommendations. Those 65 kickers have averaged 7.46 points, compared to last year's 7.65 weekly average. That average would currently rank 10th at the position. Our top weekly recommendation averages 8.00 points and the average of all highlighted kickers with great matchups is 7.73, which would rank 6th and 8th, respectively.
The top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (112 points), Harrison Butker (116 points), Wil Lutz (111 points), Greg Zuerlein (105 points), Robbie Gould (89 points), Matt Gay (cut before the season), Zane Gonzalez (93 points), Younghoe Koo (131 points), Matt Prater (97 points), Dan Bailey (70 points), Jake Elliott (64 points), and Kaimi Fairbairn (96 points) (giving an extra seven points to every kicker to account for his bye-week replacement). Despite the extra draft capital expenditure, only four of these kickers have outperformed the average of our highlighted "Great Plays"... and as we've been noting, one of those four (Koo) is a Rent-a-Kicker alum. Only Butker and Koo top the performance of our top weekly recommendation, and Butker only beats it by four points.
Excluding Gay and giving an extra 7 points to Tucker and Zuerlein as a placeholder, the remaining kickers average 98.5 points, which trails the average of "Great Plays" that were available on waivers (108.2 points).
Week 15 Situations
**Since streaming kickers is so popular and rostered players can vary across leagues, here is a list of how favorable every kicker's situation is based on Vegas projected totals and stadium. Quality plays who are on waivers in over 50% of leagues based on NFL.com roster percentages are italicized and will be highlighted in next week's column. Also, note that these rankings are kicker-agnostic; teams will occasionally change kickers mid-week, but any endorsements apply equally to whatever kicker winds up eventually getting the start.**
Great Plays
**Ryan Succop, TB
Justin Tucker, Bal
**Matt Gay, LAR
Rodrigo Blankenship, Ind
**Stephen Gostkowski, Ten
**Tyler Bass, Buf
Mason Crosby, GB
**Zane Gonzalez / Mike Nugent, Ari
Daniel Carlson, LV
Harrison Butker, KC
Chris Boswell, Pit
Good Plays
Dan Bailey, Min
Wil Lutz, NO
Robbie Gould, SF
Mike Badgley, LAC
Cody Parkey, Cle
Neutral Plays
Greg Zuerlein, Dal
Jason Myers, Sea
Younghoe Koo, Atl
Cairo Santos, Chi
Poor Plays
Brandon McManus / Taylor Russolino, Den
Jake Elliott, Phi
Kaimi Fairbairn, Hou
Graham Gano, NYG
Jason Sanders, Mia
Avoid at All Costs
Nick Folk, NE
Matt Prater, Det
Dustin Hopkins, Was
Joey Slye, Car
Josh Lambo, Jax
Chase McLaughlin, NYJ
Randy Bullock / Austin Seibert, Cin
This last week featured a pair of Sunday morning scratches and there are a few uncertain situations at the moment, so I just wanted to remind that these rankings are kicker-agnostic. If a team changes kickers at any point during the week, the recommendation applies just as strongly to the new kicker as it did to the old one.