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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 9 Results

Blake Grupe (2 FG attempts, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Grupe was a few inches away from a strong fantasy day, making one kick from 55 yards but hitting the upright from 47 yards out on his other. His 6 points tied for 14th in Week 9.

Evan McPherson (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Joe Burrow continues to look substantially improved from his early-season struggles as he gets healthier, which bodes well for Cincinnati's offense in the long term, even if they didn't have an especially explosive day last week. McPherson's six points, like Grupe's, tied for 14th at the position.

Jason Sanders (0 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 2 XPs, 2 points)

Sanders had another "nothing but extra points day", and not the fun kind where the team scores ten touchdowns. His two points stand as our second-worst showing of the season and ranked 26th among kickers.

Dustin Hopkins (3 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Cleveland's offense remains middling, but their ferocious defense sets up plenty of scoring opportunities, especially against bad offenses. Hopkins missed from 48 yards but still scored nine points, good for a 7th-place finish.

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

Gay is another kicker who played for a struggling offense but still received plenty of opportunities thanks to a smothering defensive performance. His nine points also tied for 7th on the week.

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, Justin Tucker, Tyler Bass, Jake Elliott, Jason Sanders, Brandon Aubrey, Jake Moody, and Riley Patterson.

Evan McPherson has not quite worked his way onto the list, but the Bengals' offense is trending in the right direction and he has a great matchup this week, so I wouldn't be surprised if he made it next week.

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 45 weekly recommendations. Those 45 kickers have averaged 7.78 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 12th at the position (though many of the players ahead have spent significant time on waivers, as well). Our top weekly recommendation averages 6.78 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 8.40. The former figure would rank 19th; the latter figure would rank 6th.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 61 (the average of our top picks) and 75.6 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 (73), Daniel Carlson (56), Harrison Butker (76), Tyler Bass (62), Evan McPherson (59), Younghoe Koo (72), Jason Meyers (67), Jake Elliott (80), Cameron Dicker (67), Graham Gano (47), Brandon McManus (75), Matt Gay (72). Our streaming amalgam has outscored 3-10 of the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP as well as the overall average of all drafted kickers (64.7 points).

Week 10 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