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 10 Kicker Results
Week 10 was another record-setting performance for our model-- our picks averaged double-digit points for just the fourth time in the last five years and averaged more than 11 points for the first time ever. Things won't be this good forever, so we should enjoy it while it lasts.
Jake Moody (3 FGs on 6 attempts, 2 XPs, 11 points)
Moody returned to the lineup after missing a month with an ankle injury. It's possible they rushed him back too soon, as Moody had an uncharacteristic game-- the second-year kicker had missed just five kicks in 39 attempts prior to his 3-of-6 showing this weekend.
Despite all the misses, Moody still scored 11 points and tied for 5th among all kickers, which underscores how great of a matchup he really had.
Jake Bates (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 2 XPs, 8 points)
Bates was on his way to a disappointing afternoon until a pair of game-tying and game-winning kicks from 50+ yards in the final five minutes. His 8 points tied for 12th in Week 10.
Jake Elliott (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 4 XPs, 10 points)
Elliott had a fairly unremarkable day as the Eagles dominated the Cowboys from start to finish. He finished with 10 points, which tied for the 8th-best performance of the week.
Joshua Karty (5 FGs on 6 attempts, 0 XPs, 15 points)
Where Moody's performance suggested he should have scored more points, Karty's suggested he should have had fewer (despite the miss from 57 yards). Typically when a team has six scoring opportunities in a game, they're not all going to come on field goals; usually, you should expect 8 or 9 points in a game like this, not 15. But we'll take the positive variance where we can; Karty led all kickers for the week.
John Parker Romo (4 FGs on 4 attempts, 0 XPs, 12 points)
The Vikings placed Will Reichard on injured reserve hours after Rent-a-Kicker published last week, but as I often say, the model only considers situations and those situations are the same regardless of who is kicking. Romo is a perfect illustration; he's been trying to make an NFL roster for three years. He finally got his shot and in his first NFL game finished as the 3rd-best kicker of the week.
Like Karty, Romo overperformed the fundamentals-- teams rarely score 4+ times in a game with nothing but field goals. This is largely why Karty and Romo rated as "good plays" last week while Moody, Bates, and Elliott rated as "great plays". But fortunately for us, we don't have to give any points back just because our kicker scored "too many" of them.
Kicker Results To Date
To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 50 weekly recommendations. Those 50 kickers have averaged 7.72 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 10th at the position. Our top three picks average 8.33 points, which would rank 6th.
Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would average 83.3 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (82), Brandon Aubrey (85), Harrison Butker (81), Jake Elliott (65), Ka'imi Fairbairn (92), Younghoe Koo (74), Jake Moody (80), Evan McPherson (68), Cameron Dicker (78), Jason Sanders (69), Tyler Bass (84), and Jason Myers (74) (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 from preseason. On average, drafted kickers have scored 7.68 points, about 0.65 points per game less than our streaming recommendations.
Week 11 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)
- **49ers (Jake Moody) (see below)
- Texans (Ka'imi Fairbairn)
Good Plays
- **Eagles (Jake Elliott)
- **Dolphins (Jason Sanders)
- **Rams (Joshua Karty)
- Chargers (Cameron Dicker)
- Jets (Greg Zuerlein)
- Packers (Brandon McManus)
- Broncos (Wil Lutz)
- Saints (Blake Grupe)
- Vikings (John Parker Romo)
Neutral Plays
- Ravens (Justin Tucker)
- Bills (Tyler Bass)
- Bengals (Evan McPherson)
- Commanders (Austin Seibert)
- Browns (Dustin Hopkins)
- Falcons (Younghoe Koo)
Poor Plays
- Steelers (Chris Boswell)
Avoid
- Chiefs (Harrison Butker)
- Seahawks (Jason Myers)
- Colts (Matt Gay)
- Patriots (Joey Slye)
- Raiders (Daniel Carlson)
- Cowboys (Brandon Aubrey)
- Jaguars (Cam Little)
- Bears (Cairo Santos)
- Titans (Nick Folk)
*Note: Per NFL.com data, Moody is currently rostered in 52% of leagues, which is just above our 50% threshold for inclusion. But since he was only rostered in 30% of leagues at the start of last week, and since he was our top recommendation, I'm counting him in our total next week. I imagine he's disproportionately likely to already be rostered by readers of this column, who will probably choose to hold him and start him again, so including him in the average better represents how our readers actually fare in Week 11.
