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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 14 Results

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

Sanders had a 44-yard attempt blocked but made kicks from 20 and 31 yards, finishing with 9 points, which tied for 8th.

Jake Moody (0 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 4 XPs, 4 points)

San Francisco put up one of our dreaded "nothing-but-touchdowns" days, leaving Moody with just four points, which ranked just 19th among kickers.

Cameron Dicker (0 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 1 XP, 1 point)

The Chargers weren't exactly moving up and down the field even before Justin Herbert's injury, but the arrival of backup quarterback Easton Stick pretty much spelled the end of any hopes their kicker might have had. Dicker kicked an extra point after a 4th-quarter touchdown to avoid the complete shutout, but his one point ranked 26th on the week.

Anders Carlson (4 FG attempts, 3 FGs, 1 XP, 10 points)

Carlson missed from 45 yards and lost out on a second extra-point late in the game after Green Bay went for two, but the Packers' offensive struggles translated into lots of field goal attempts, so his ten points still ranked 5th on the week.

Blake Grupe (1 FG attempt, 0 FGs, 4 XPs, 4 points)

Grupe had a horrible miss from 29 yards that kept him from a respectable outing. Instead, he subsisted on four extra points, tying for 19th among kickers.

(As an aside: I dearly hope some of my readers managed to stream into Brandon Aubrey and hold him. Aubrey leads all kickers since I debuted the "consider holding" feature and led all kickers in Week 14 with 15 points, including makes from 50, 59, and 60 yards.)

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): Justin Tucker, Tyler Bass, Jake Elliott, Jason Sanders, Brandon Aubrey, and Jake Moody. The Lions' up-and-down offensive efforts in recent weeks move Patterson off of this list.

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 70 weekly recommendations. Those 70 kickers have averaged 7.49 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 6.50 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 7.82. The former figure would rank 22nd; the latter figure would rank 6th.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 91 (the average of our top picks) and 109.5 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 (115), Daniel Carlson (84), Harrison Butker (106), Tyler Bass (102), Evan McPherson (100), Younghoe Koo (101), Jason Meyers (110), Jake Elliott (110), Cameron Dicker (94), Graham Gano (77), Brandon McManus (108), Matt Gay (104), for an average of 100.9 points. Our streaming amalgam has either outscored 9 of those kickers (the average of all "great plays") or been tied or outscored by 10 of those kickers (the "top pick"), which is still a very weird split.

Week 15 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