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 7 Kicker Results
Kicker Results To Date
To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 35 weekly recommendations. Those 35 kickers have averaged 7.34 points, compared to 7.75 in 2023, 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. Our top three picks average 8.48 points, which would rank 7th.
Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would have 59.3 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (62), Brandon Aubrey (66), Harrison Butker (56), Jake Elliott (38), Ka'imi Fairbairn (63), Younghoe Koo (59), Jake Moody (57), Evan McPherson (48), Cameron Dicker (58), Jason Sanders (40), Tyler Bass (55), and Jason Myers (52) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).
Our streamers are now outscoring 9 out of the top 12 kickers. On average, drafted kickers have scored 54.5 points, about 0.7 points per game less than our streaming recommendations. We're currently riding high after a pair of big weeks, so I expect this to regress a bit going forward... but in the meantime, we can enjoy it while it lasts.
Week 8 Kicker 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
- **Lions (Jake Bates)
- **Broncos (Wil Lutz)
- Texans (Ka'imi Fairbairn)
- Ravens (Justin Tucker)
Good Plays
- **Packers (Brandon McManus)
- Chiefs (Harrison Butker)
- **Jets (Greg Zuerlein)
- **49ers (Jake Moody / Anders Carlson)
- Vikings (Will Reichard)
- Bengals (Evan McPherson)
- Bills (Tyler Bass)
- Dolphins (Jason Sanders)
- Falcons (Younghoe Koo)
- Chargers (Cameron Dicker)
Neutral Plays
- Rams (Joshua Karty)
- Jaguars (Cam Little)
- Eagles (Jake Elliott)
Poor Plays
- Bears (Cairo Santos)
- Seahawks (Jason Myers)
- Cardinals (Matt Prater / Chad Ryland)
- Buccaneers (Chase McLaughlin)
- Steelers (Chris Boswell)
- Cowboys (Brandon Aubrey)
- Colts (Matt Gay)
Avoid
- Commanders (Austin Seibert)
- Titans (Nick Folk)
- Panthers (Eddy Piñeiro)
- Browns (Dustin Hopkins)
- Patriots (Joey Slye)
- Saints (Blake Grupe)
- Raiders (Daniel Carlson)
- Giants (Graham Gano)
