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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 17 Results

Jake Moody (2 FG Attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

I typically consider anything above 8 points to be a good week, so Moody closes out our season with a solid showing. The 49ers could have scored more if they'd needed to, but they didn't need to, so they didn't. Moody's 9 points still tied for a 10th-place finish.

Lucas Havrisik (0 FG Attempts, 0 FGs, 2 XPs, 2 points)

As I often mention, there's no "talent" component to my model. Sometimes, players like Lucas Havrisik seem to call that decision into question. Havrisik missed two out of four extra points this weekend and lost the team's trust so thoroughly that they have since cut him and brought back Brett Maher-- who was their original kicker until he missed two field goals and an extra point in a game in October, causing the Rams to lose trust and cut him for Havrisik. Which kind of gets to the point: is Havrisik a worse kicker than Maher? Who knows. Havrisik has converted on 34 of 42 kicks this year (83.3%). Maher is at 29 of 36 (80.6%). Los Angeles is probably just spinning its wheels.

Either way, given how reactive teams are to last week's performance, truly awful kickers wash out too quickly for a talent component to pay dividends. In the meantime, Havrisik's 2 points ranked 30th among kickers.

Greg Joseph (1 FG Attempt, 1 FG, 1 XP, 4 points)

Another reminder of why we try so hard to avoid finding ourselves on the wrong end of a blowout. (And also a reminder of how hard that really is; the Vikings were favored by 1.5.) Minnesota passed up attempts of 26 and 27 yards in the 4th quarter because they were trailing by 20 points. With those kicks, Joseph could have ranked 9th for the week. Without them, he finishes 26th.

Matt Gay (3 FG Attempts, 3 FGs, 2 XPs, 11 points)

There are no asterisks around Gay's day, fortunately. Gay converted from 33, 38, and 45 to give the Colts a competitive, 3-point win, finishing as the 6th-best kicker in Week 17.

Ka'imi Fairbairn (4 FG Attempts, 4 FGs, 2 XPs, 14 points)

Fairbairn is a long-time staple for Rent-a-Kicker, so it was good to see him back healthy for Houston. They certainly didn't need his points, but his fantasy managers appreciated them, anyway; with 14 points, he was the second-best kicker of the week.

Final Results

This year, Rent-a-Kicker made 85 weekly recommendations. Those 85 kickers averaged 7.75 points, compared to 6.82 in 2022, 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, and 7.39 in 2019. That average would have been good for an 8th-place finish at the position (though three of the seven kickers ahead were undrafted this August). Our top weekly recommendation averages 7.35 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 7.84. The former figure would rank 11th; the latter figure would rank 7th.

My preferred metric is the average of all available great plays. Comparing to seasons past, we averaged 7.84 this year, 6.79 in 2022, 8.58 in 2021, and 7.59 in 2020. I said after 2021 that our average was too high and we'd gotten lucky. I also said after 2022 that our average was too low and we'd gotten unlucky. 2023 largely backed up both of those claims, finishing very close to our long-term average of 7.70 points per game. While results can fluctuate over small samples, that's about what you should expect to average when following this model.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 125 (the average of our top picks) and 133.3 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 (149), Daniel Carlson (107), Harrison Butker (136), Tyler Bass (124), Evan McPherson (117), Younghoe Koo (124), Jason Myers (137), Jake Elliott (137), Cameron Dicker (122), Graham Gano (95), Brandon McManus (123), Matt Gay (131), for an average of 125.2 points.

Our streaming amalgam outscored 7-8 of those kickers and outperformed the overall average despite costing nothing to acquire. Why spend a draft pick or waiver priority on a kicker when you can get the same or better production without it?

Week 18 Situations

**Because this is the last week for this column, we will not designate five picks to evaluate next week. I'm still providing the full list of recommendations for anyone who still has something to play for in Week 18.**

Great Plays