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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 8 Results

Jason Sanders (1 FG Attempt, 1 FG, 4 XPs, 7 points)

Jason Sanders is still getting more extra point attempts and fewer field goal attempts than I'd like, but I'd still expect that to change going forward. In the meantime, Miami's offense remains potent enough that even when the field goal attempts aren't there, Sanders remains a solid weekly play; his seven points tied for 12th among kickers.

Cameron Dicker (3 FG Attempts, 3 FGs, 3 XPs, 12 points)

The Chargers raced to a 17-point first-half lead, which probably contributed to a more conservative gameplan in the second half. That worked out fine for Dicker, who added another six points after halftime as the Chargers were content to settle for long field goals. His 12 points were the second-most of any kicker last week.

Brandon Aubrey (2 FG Attempts, 2 FGs, 5 XPs, 11 points)

Dallas' offense has been high-variance to this point of the season, but when it's good, it's very good. It was very good last weekend, with Aubrey kicking a raft of extra points as well as short (27-yard) and long (58-yard) field goals to finish with 11 points, tied for 4th on the week.

Jake Moody (1 FG Attempt, 1 FG, 2 XPs, 5 points)

Moody scored 12 points in each of the first three weeks but has only managed 5, 6, 5, 5, and 5 points since then. That's a shame for those who have been relying on him. Part of it is just the streaky nature of field goals; Moody has converted 80% of his kicks for the year, which is a fairly typical rate, but all three of his misses have come in the last three weeks. If those misses had come in Weeks 1 and 3 instead of Weeks 6 and 7, he would have scored 9, 12, 6, 5, 11, 8, and 5, and instead of feeling like he was "trending down" we'd recognize his performance as just random fluctuations. Additionally, he has two "nothing but extra points" games through eight weeks, which is usually bad for his weekly finish but is also a positive indicator for the future. All of this is to say that I'm not ready to dump Moody, even though he finished just 22nd among kickers in Week 8.

Matt Gay (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Gay had a strong performance in a losing effort; his nine points tied for 6th at the position.

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 about 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, 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, Jake Moody, and Riley Patterson.

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 40 weekly recommendations. Those 40 kickers have averaged 7.95 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 11th at the position (though many of the players ahead have spent significant time on waivers, as well). Our top weekly recommendation averages 6.88 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 8.53. The former figure would rank 19th; the latter figure would rank 8th.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 55 (the average of our top picks) and 68.2 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 (60), Daniel Carlson (44), Harrison Butker (73), Tyler Bass (58), Evan McPherson (53), Younghoe Koo (58), Jason Meyers (64), Jake Elliott (76), Cameron Dicker (58), Graham Gano (41), Brandon McManus (69), Matt Gay (63). Our streaming amalgam has outscored 3-9 of the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP as well as the overall average of all drafted kickers (58.3 points).

A Quick Note on Top Plays

Yes, it's weird that our "top plays" are averaging about 2 points per game less than the average of our "great plays". What's going on? It's just randomness being random.

For instance, the "top play" will vary dramatically from league to league; last week, Jason Sanders (rostered in 33% of NFL.com fantasy leagues) was the play, and Riley Patterson (rostered in 53%) was not. But in plenty of leagues (maybe in as many as 15% of them), Sanders was rostered and Patterson available, which would make a significant difference-- Patterson scored 15 points to Sanders' 7. Since we're 8 weeks in, that 8-point difference would work out to an extra point per game for the season.

Over a large enough sample, I don't expect our Top Play to underperform the Great Play average. But I don't expect it to overperform that average, either; from 2020 through 2022, our Top Plays scored 384 points, while the average of all Great Plays would have scored 382.4, a difference of just 1.6 points over 50 weeks.

When I say that the gap between tiers matters but the order within tiers doesn't, this is what I mean. By contrast, the difference between the average "great play" who makes my Top 5 recommendations and the average "good play" who makes my Top 5 recommendations is 0.53 points per game, which is where I get the estimate that dropping down a tier costs you about a half point per game in expectation.

Since kicker availability varies so much from league to league, I calibrated my model specifically to optimize the average of all "great play" recommendations, so when I personally track its performance, that's the metric I use.

Week 8 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