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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 11 Results

Riley Patterson (0 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 3 XPs, 3 points)

The Lions had more trouble dispatching the Bears than intended, but they put up 17 points in the final three minutes to win 31-21. Unfortunately for their kicker (and any fantasy teams that were relying on him), only one of those points came from placekicks-- they scored two touchdowns but attempted one extra point, one two-point conversion, and tacked on a safety as time expired. Patterson finished just 23rd among kickers in Week 11.

Jason Sanders (3 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 2 XPs, 8 points)

Early in the season, it seemed like Miami would spend all year scoring touchdowns instead of field goals, but their scoring mix has reverted toward league average in recent weeks. Sanders missed a 50-yard attempt but made field goals from 41 and 51 as the Dolphins ground out a 20-13 victory. Sanders' 8 points were good enough to tie for 9th.

Jake Moody (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

A pair of short field goals and three extra points was enough for Moody to finish 7th among kickers in what was largely a down week at the position.

Matt Ammendola (1 FG attempt, 0 FGs, 3 XPs, 3 points)

Ammendola's Texans were another team that struggled more than expected in Week 11. Houston scored three touchdowns in the first half and missed a 48-yard field goal attempt on their first drive after halftime but couldn't muster anything except punts and interceptions the rest of the way. Ammendola's 3 points ranked 23rd for the week.

Brandon McManus (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 4 XPs, 10 points)

Jacksonville's offense got healthy in a big way against the Titans, including 10 points for their kicker, a total that tied him for 4th 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.

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 55 weekly recommendations. Those 55 kickers have averaged 7.73 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 6.64 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 8.21. The former figure would rank 22nd; the latter figure would rank 4th.

What accounts for the huge difference there? Just random noise. Coming into this season, our "top play" averaged 7.68 points over the life of this column, while all "great plays" combined averaged 7.66-- essentially a wash. The model presents kickers by category because the differences within the categories are relatively negligible. That means it's not especially surprising to get a few bad games clustered among the top recommendations or a few good games clustered among the 2nd or 3rd recommendations, which can produce a fairly dramatic split over small samples.

These splits are equally likely in either direction. So far this season, Top Picks are underperforming the "great average" by 1.6 points. Over the last half of the season last year, they overperformed by 1.3 points. Going forward, I'd expect top picks to track the overall "great average". (But if you want to grab the 2nd-highest recommended kicker each week instead, that's fine, too; all "great plays" are fairly interchangeable.)

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 73 (the average of our top picks) and 90.3 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 (90), Daniel Carlson (73), Harrison Butker (87), Tyler Bass (78), Evan McPherson (76), Younghoe Koo (83), Jason Meyers (94), Jake Elliott (89), Cameron Dicker (83), Graham Gano (59), Brandon McManus (88), Matt Gay (82), for an average of 81.8 points. Our streaming amalgam has either outscored 11 of those kickers (the average of all "great plays") or been tied or outscored by 11 of those kickers (the "top pick"), which is admittedly a very weird split.

Week 12 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