Photo: USA Today Sports

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 2 Results

Brandon McManus (3 FG attempts, 3 FGs, 1 XP, 10 points)

Denver's offense has been struggling through two weeks, but that worked in McManus' favor as he kicked a pair of field goals from the goal line, added a 50-yarder late in the contest, and finished the week with 10 of Denver's 16 points, which ranked 4th among all kickers.

Robbie Gould (3 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

There was some concern about the weather in San Francisco, which prompted some to ask me whether I adjust for it in my model. I don't because we publish on Tuesday (to assist with weekly waiver runs) and weather reports this far out are fairly useless. Even if they weren't, though, the Vegas oddsmakers are already accounting for weather when they set the betting line, and the model is heavily based on the betting line, so counting the weather again would be counting it twice. Other than extremely high winds, the impact of weather on the kicking game is overrated, and Gould demonstrated the point on a sloppy field. His day could have been even better as Seattle blocked an easy 20-yard chip shot (and returned it for their only points of the day), but Gould still managed to score 9 points, which tied for 7th-best for the week.

Jake Elliott (2 FG attempts, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Elliott also had a blocked kick standing between him and an even better day, but he scored 6 of Philadelphia's 24 points as the Eagles rolled over the Vikings. He finished the week tied for 16th.

Austin Seibert (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 4 XPs, 10 points)

Through two weeks, the Detroit Lions have been the top-tier offense that nobody saw coming. If they keep this up, GMs who streamed into Seibert might opt to stop streaming and just ride alongside this offense for a while. Seibert's 10 points tied for 4th at the position.

Joey Slye (0 FG attempts, FGs, 1 XP, 1 point)

Joey Slye is the first prominent victim of the year to the Underdog Curse. Washington scored four touchdowns but fell so far behind early that they attempted a two-point conversion after two of them, and Slye missed on one of his two remaining extra point attempts, leaving him with a lone point, which ranked 26th among all kickers.

Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made ten weekly recommendations. Those ten kickers have averaged 6.8 points, compared to 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, and 7.39 in 2019. That average would currently rank just 17th at the position. Our top weekly recommendation averages 9 points, though, while every highlighted kicker with a great matchup averages 8.20, marks that would rank 5th and 9th, respectively. Data is noisy this early in the season, so we'll wait a few weeks before comparing our results to date against the top kickers by preseason ADP.

Week 3 Situations

**Here is a list of the teams with the best matchups based on Vegas projected totals and stadium, along with the expected kicker for each team. The top five players 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 specifically apply to situations; teams will occasionally change kickers mid-week, but any endorsements apply equally to whatever kicker winds up eventually getting the start.**

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