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 4 Kicker Results

Matt Prater (0 FG attempts, 2 XP, 2 points)

It's hard to remember now, but Arizona was favored against the Commanders in a game that was expected to be a shootout (by far the highest over/under of the week). The Commanders held up their end of the bargain, but Arizona's offense struggled again to recapture that Week 2 spark. Prater kicked two extra points, but the Cardinals passed up two 50+ yard field goal attempts (normally a Prater specialty), so he finished with just two points, tied for the worst score of the week.

Jake Bates (0 FG attempts, 6 XP, 6 points)

Arizona's offense might not have shown up last week, but Detroit's definitely did. Ideally, they'd have stalled out in field goal range once or twice, but kicking nothing but extra points isn't the end of the world when your team is going to score 6 touchdowns on the day. Bates finished 16th among kickers in Week 4.

Austin Seibert (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 4 XP, 10 points)

The other side of the shootout of the week; we preferred the Cardinals since they were favored and less likely to get blown out (so much for that...), but the Commanders' kicker also showed up on our list, and he delivered on the game's promise; he matched Jack Bates with six scoring opportunities, but because two of those were field goals, he finished with 10 points-- good for a 6th-place finish.

Greg Zuerlein (4 FG attempts, 3 FGs, 0 XP, 9 points)

This was definitely a backdoor cover. The Jets were the lowest-scoring team in the league last week, but since their kicker provided all of those points, he still had a good day. Zuerlein missed a 50-yarder to win at the end of the game that would have bumped him to fourth, but even without it, he ranked eighth among kickers. 

Jake Elliott (0 FG attempts, 2 XPs, 2 points)

Elliott was a recommendation of necessity; the lack of quality options meant we had to choose a "neutral play" for the first time all year. The Eagles offense hasn't looked great since A.J. Brown was injured after Week 1. Elliott tied Prater as the worst fantasy kicker of the week.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 20 weekly recommendations. Those 20 kickers have averaged 6.3 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 25th at the position. Our top plays average 5.5 points per game, which would rank 27th, while all Great plays average 5.80 points per game, which would also rank 27th.

Samples are still quite small and these numbers will move significantly over the rest of the year (our Top Plays ranked 12th after last week), but things haven't been going well after a hot first two weeks.

The average of all of our available "Great Plays" to this point would have scored 23.3 points. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (28), Brandon Aubrey (43), Harrison Butker (32), Jake Elliott (20), Ka'imi Fairbairn (31), Younghoe Koo (33), Jake Moody (43), Evan McPherson (36), Cameron Dicker (26), Jason Sanders (21), Tyler Bass (32), and Jason Myers (28). Ten out of twelve picks have outperformed our streamers. On average, drafted kickers have scored 31.1 points, a 2-point-per-game advantage over our streaming recommendations.

Week 5 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.