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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 a dozen or more starting kickers are 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 6 Results

Jason Sanders (0 FG Attempts, 0 FGs, 6 XPs, 6 points)

Another week, another 40-points-with-no-field-goals game from the Miami Dolphins. Good offenses do tend to score a higher ratio of touchdowns to field goals, but rates this high are extreme and tend to regress going forward; I wrote about this tendency back in 2020 when Rent-a-Kicker kept recommending Jason Meyers for the Seahawks, who opened with 23 touchdowns against 2 field goal attempts. Sure enough, over the next four weeks, the "too many extra points" kickers saw their production rise by 33% over the next four weeks, while the "too many field goals" kickers fell by 20%. Which is to say that better days are ahead for Sanders, who finished Week 19 tied for 16th.

Brandon Aubrey (2 FG Attempts, 2 FGs, 2 XPs, 8 points)

It was a much more normal game for Aubrey, who kicked a field goal at the end of each half to secure a 3-point lead. His 8 points tied for 11th.

Brandon McManus (3 FG attempts, 3 FGs, 4 XPs, 13 points)

Don't look now, but the Jacksonville Jaguars offense is starting to heat up. It's not enough to get McManus a "consider holding instead of streaming" recommendation, but he's made his way onto the watch list. His 13 points tied for 3rd on the week.

Cameron Dicker (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 2 XPs, 5 points)

While Aubrey's Cowboys were able to put him in position for a late 4th-quarter field goal to take the lead, the Dicker's Chargers were unable to match, so Dicker finished with just 5 points, 22nd at the position.

Greg Joseph (3 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 1 XP, 7 points)

Thanks to byes, Joseph was the first "neutral play" of the season to make our Top 5 recommendations. He won't be the last, but hopefully, you'll be able to find enough Great and Good matchups each week that you won't have to dip this far down the list. (In the averages below, I typically assume you're able to find at least one Great Play per week.) Joseph did pretty well, making two 50+ yard attempts and missing a third. He also had an extra point blocked. His 7 points tied for 15th.

A Tip for Holding Kickers

In Week 4, I gave a quick rule of thumb for when to hold on to a kicker instead of streaming. As a recap: the order of players within a tier is only of minor importance, but each tier you drop down costs you maybe half a point per game in expectation. I'd start a kicker I wanted to hold over an option rated one tier higher, but I'd rather avoid starting one over a kicker rated two tiers higher if I could avoid it, and I'd never start a kicker over an option rated three or four tiers higher.

I also provided a list of kickers I would consider holding rather than continuing to stream. Since that seems potentially useful, I'm going to turn it into a recurring weekly feature. Here's the current list (in no particular order): Harrison Butker, Tyler Bass, Jake Elliott, Jason Sanders, Brandon Aubrey, and Jake Moody.

Any other kicker is, in my opinion, expendable for anyone with a better matchup this week.

Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 30 weekly recommendations. Those 30 kickers have averaged 7.70 points, compared to 6.82 in 2022, 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, and 7.39 in 2019. That average would currently rank 14th at the position (though many of the players ahead have spent significant time on waivers, as well). Our top weekly recommendation averages 7.17 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 8.47. The former figure would rank 16th, the latter figure would rank 9th.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 43 (the average of our top picks) and 50.8 points (the average of all our great plays). Here are the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP as well as how many points they would have gotten you (giving a 6-point bonus for any weeks they may have missed): Justin Tucker (45), Daniel Carlson (36), Harrison Butker (57), Tyler Bass (47), Evan McPherson (40), Younghoe Koo (37), Jason Meyers (50), Jake Elliott (61), Cameron Dicker (41), Graham Gano (35), Brandon McManus (50), Matt Gay (46). Our streaming amalgam has outscored 5-9 of the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP as well as the overall average of all drafted kickers (44.4 points).

Week 7 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.**

Great Plays