Photo: USA Today Sports

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 2 Kicker Results

Week 1 proved to be a target-rich environment for kicker streamers. Here's how our highlighted choices fared:

Jake Bates (3 FGs on 3 attempts, 1 XP, 10 points)

This was a fortunate break for us from a Lions offense that hasn't looked as explosive as expected so far this season; typically when teams score fewer than 20 points, their kicker isn't having a great day, but three stalled drives lead to three short field goals and Bates managed 10 points, good for a 10th-place weekly finish.

Jake Elliott (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 1 XP, 7 points)

Elliott did lose out on an extra point as Philadelphia opted to try for a late 2-point conversion, but he still finished with 7 points. In a normal season that'd be a fairly strong showing, but this week it was only good for 19th.

Matt Prater (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 5 XPs, 11 points)

Prater may be the oldest kicker in the league, but he's got plenty of life left in his leg; the Cardinals trusted him to kick from 48 and 57 yards and he made both. He added five extra points as Arizona won in a rout, scoring 11 and tying for 6th this week. If you added Prater last week, consider holding onto him for a while-- if Arizona's offense continues to look like it did, he could easily finish as one of the top kickers in fantasy, especially given his penchant for long field goal attempts.

Joshua Karty (1 FG on 1 attempt, 1 XP, 4 points)

Our kicker model punishes teams that are big underdogs because the results often look like they did for Karty-- the Rams passed up 21- and 25-yard attempts to try for touchdowns (as well as a 58-yard attempt, although few coaches are bold enough to kick there) and Karty finished with just four points and a miserable 28th-place showing. Unfortunately for us, Vegas didn't expect the game to be quite so one-sided; the Cardinals were only favored by 1.5 points. But this was why we tended to prefer Prater over Karty last week.

Jason Sanders (1 FG on 1 attempt, 1 XP)

Another offense that hasn't looked like itself so far this year, the Dolphins couldn't get anything going against the Bills even before starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a concussion and was lost for the game. Sanders matched Karty with 4 points, tying for a 28th-place finish.

Kicker Results To Date

I briefly mentioned last week that Week 1 was a target-rich environment for kicker streamers. In fact, Week 1 featured the 2nd-most made field goals of any week in NFL history. At least, it did at the time. Week 2 broke the all-time record for made field goals, so now Week 1 has fallen to third.

The NFL has just set a new record for field goals in a single week.

Most field goals in a single week, NFL history:
70: 2024 Week 2 (with a half to go)
69: 2016 Week 16
68: 2024 Week 1
67: 2012 Week 1
65: 2023 Week 3

— Quirky Research (@QuirkyResearch) September 17, 2024

One week could potentially be a fluke, but two weeks is a trend. With the league looking like a field goal fest, I imagine we'll smash our long-term average of 7.5 points per game. But we're going to need to, since everyone else will be smashing their long-term averages, too.

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made ten weekly recommendations. Those ten kickers have averaged 8.0 points, compared to 7.75 in 2023, 6.82 in 2022, 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, and 7.39 in 2019. That average would currently rank just 21st at the position, but rankings aren't too meaningful on such small samples. Our top plays average 9 points per game, which would rank 12th, while all Great plays average 8.33 points per game, which would rank 21st.

We'll continue to track averages and ranks over time, and in a few weeks we'll begin comparing to the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP.

Week 3 Kicker 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.