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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 16 Results

Jason Sanders (5 FG Attempts, 5 FGs, 1 XP, 16 points)

Seemingly, all season long, we've been talking about how Sanders has been getting "too many" extra points relative to his field goal attempts, but this was likely to reverse at some point. Well, Week 16 was about the best possible time for that reversal to hit; Sanders hit five field goals (three from beyond 50 yards) and scored 16 points, finishing 2nd among kickers and giving his teams a huge boost in their chances to reach the championship game.

Michael Badgley (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Badgley had a fourth extra point attempt blocked, finishing the week with 6 points, which ranked 15th among kickers.

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

It turns out the 49ers offense is stoppable after all, at least if your defense is as good as the Baltimore Ravens. San Francisco saw five drives end in interceptions, which sharply limited Moody's scoring opportunities; they also passed up a 34-yard field goal to go for it on 4th-and-17 late in the game because they trailed by so much. Moody's 5 points ranked 19th for the week.

Lucas Havrisik (4 FG attempts, 3 FGs, 3 XPs, 12 points)

Any approach to streaming kickers that concerns itself with talent would naturally be leery of a player like Havrisik (who did miss from 47 yards on the day). Still, matchups matter more than skill, and his 12 points were the 6th-highest total last week, providing a solid boost to the prospects of any team that took a chance on him.

Cairo Santos (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Santos doesn't make this list very often, but picking the kicker facing the Cardinals once again proved a fruitful strategy; Santos' 9 points tied for 10th among kickers.

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.

Since most leagues hold their championship game in Week 17, there's no need for a list of "kickers worth holding" anymore. But I do want to check back in on the first list of the season to see how holding would compare to streaming. From Week 4 through Week 16, all of our weekly recommendations averaged 7.49 points per game. Meanwhile, the four available kickers we recommended holding were Brandon Aubrey (8.75ppg), Jason Sanders (7.75ppg), Cameron Dicker (6.92ppg), and Jake Moody (6.33ppg); collectively, they averaged 7.44 points per game, or basically the same as if you'd kept streaming.

Was it worth it? If you held Aubrey, sure. The other three are still unrostered in more than 50% of NFL.com fantasy leagues, so there was no need to hold them if you wanted to retain their services, but Aubrey is now the second-most-rostered kicker at 88.4%, trailing only Justin Tucker.

In expectation, both routes were roughly equally productive. If you're more comfortable playing matchups, that's fine. If you'd rather just pick a single option to set and forget, that's fine, too.

Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 80 weekly recommendations. Those 80 kickers have averaged 7.74 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 7th at the position (though many of the players ahead have spent significant time on waivers, as well). Our top weekly recommendation averages 7.25 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 7.81. The former figure would rank 12th; the latter figure would rank 7th.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 116 (the average of our top picks) and 124.9 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 (141), Daniel Carlson (99), Harrison Butker (117), Tyler Bass (115), Evan McPherson (112), Younghoe Koo (119), Jason Meyers (126), Jake Elliott (130), Cameron Dicker (113), Graham Gano (89), Brandon McManus (109), Matt Gay (120), for an average of 115.8 points.

Our streaming amalgam has either outscored between 6 and 9 of those kickers, as well as outperforming the overall average (despite costing nothing to acquire). (And thanks to Jason Sanders, whose big day last week finally erased most of the gap between our top picks and the average of all great plays.)

Week 17 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