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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 10 Results

Jake Elliott (0 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 3 XPs, 3 points)

For the second straight week, Elliott scored just three extra points. When Elliott has played this year, the Eagles have scored 30 touchdowns and attempted just eight field goals, a ratio which... really sucks for us! But every time I've looked at this in the past, past scoring mix hasn't predicted anything about future scoring mix, so all we can do is keep starting Elliott and hope that we finally catch a break sooner or later. This week wasn't that week; his three points ranked 24th at the position.

Robbie Gould (3 FG attempts, 3 FGs, 1 XP, 10 points)

There was a time when a 10-point game wouldn't have been much cause for celebration, but this year we'll take what we can get. Last year, 20 out of our 53 "great plays" hit double digits, a 37.8% success rate. This year Gould is just the second double-digit scorer in 24 tries, an 8.3% success rate. He did miss an extra point, but his 10 points still ranked 4th for the week.

Jason Sanders (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Sanders had the rare game with two missed extra points (one wide left, one wide right), but with the Dolphins' offense firing on all cylinders right now, it didn't even matter; Sanders' 9 points tied for 7th among all kickers.

Cairo Santos (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Santos gave us our fourth missed extra point of the week, but it's better to miss extra points than field goals, and his 6 points still ranked 14th.

Graham Gano (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Gano put up an identical stat line to Santos (minus the missed extra point) and likewise tied for 14th.

Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 50 weekly recommendations. Those 50 kickers have averaged 6.36 points, compared to 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, 7.65 in 2019, and 7.43 in 2018. That average would currently rank just 18th at the position (after giving 6 points to every kicker who has had their bye week already). Our top weekly recommendation averages just 5.00 points, and every highlighted kicker with a great matchup averages 6.17, marks that would rank 28th and 21st.

Here are the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP along with how many points they've scored to date in parentheses: Justin Tucker (85), Tyler Bass (80), Matt Gay (58), Harrison Butker (60*), Daniel Carlson (77), Evan McPherson (62), Matt Prater (51), Ryan Succop (79), Brandon McManus (63), Nick Folk (83), Dustin Hopkins (63), and Rodrigo Blankenship (58*). (Starred kickers are credited with 6 additional points for every week they missed)

So far, the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP average 68.3 points compared to 61.7 from the average of all of our great plays. Yeah, it still stings.

Week 11 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