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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

Evan McPherson (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

The Bengals and Texans might have played the most entertaining game of the week on Sunday with a bevy of great plays and late swings. McPherson capitalized with nine points and a 12th-place fantasy finish.

Riley Patterson (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 5 XPs, 11 points)

If Bengals/Texans wasn't the most exciting game of the week, then Lions/Chargers was. The teams combined for ten touchdowns and 79 total points, the last three coming on a 41-yard Riley Patterson game-winning kick as time expired. Patterson was the 7th-best kicker of the week for fantasy.

Jake Moody (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 4 XPs, 10 points)

Heading into the week, the prominent question was "What's wrong with San Francisco?" The 49ers answered with "not a blessed thing", rolling over the Jaguars 34-3 alongside 10 points from their kicker, who tied for 9th on the week.

Cameron Dicker (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 5 XPs, 8 points)

Dicker matched Riley Patterson kick for kick in a back-and-forth game. The Chargers tied the game three times in the second half only for the Lions to pull ahead again on the next drive; the difference between the two kickers is Dicker didn't have any time left to answer Patterson's game-winner. His 8 points ranked 14th in Week 10.

Matt Gay (2 FG attempts, 1 FG, 1 XP, 4 points)

Gay came up short on a 57-yarder to end the first half, and the Colts didn't give him many chances other than that in a 10-6 victory. His 4 points ranked 25th out of 28 kickers last 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 had a productive week but the Bengals offense looked a little disjointed compared to recent weeks, so he doesn't make his way onto the "recommend holding" list yet. The Texans continue to roll, so their kicker (currently Matt Ammendola after mainstay Kaimi Fairbairn was placed on IR) also earns a spot on the watch list. (But with Patterson, Sanders, and Moody all inexplicably available in at least 2/3s of NFL.com fantasy leagues, you should be able to find a better option to hold if you want one.)

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 50 weekly recommendations. Those 50 kickers have averaged 7.84 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 8th at the position (though many of the players ahead have spent significant time on waivers, as well). Our top weekly recommendation averages 7.00 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 8.43. The former figure would rank 18th; the latter figure would rank 4th.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 70 (the average of our top picks) and 84.3 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 (80), Daniel Carlson (66), Harrison Butker (82), Tyler Bass (64), Evan McPherson (68), Younghoe Koo (77), Jason Meyers (84), Jake Elliott (86), Cameron Dicker (75), Graham Gano (53), Brandon McManus (78), Matt Gay (76). Our streaming amalgam has outscored 4-11 of the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP as well as the overall average of all drafted kickers (74.1 points).

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