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 6 Kicker Results

Jake Bates (4 FGs on 4 attempts, 5 XPs, 17 points)

Bates had been a frequently recommended streaming target through the first five weeks, but he had largely not delivered on that promise. All of that changed in a big way in Week 6, as the Lions dismantled the Cowboys, and Bates put up 17 points. This wasn't just the highest mark of the week; it was the highest total by the top-recommended streaming option since at least 2020.  

Jake Elliott (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 2 XPs, 8 points)

Elliott had a 57-yard attempt blocked (in another example of the recent trend of pulling the center down at the snap and letting the most athletic player leap into the gap). This isn't much of a knock on Elliott, though; he still finished with 8 points, good for 14th among kickers.

Brayden Narveson (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 4 XPs, 10 points)

Narveson missed his league-leading fourth kick of the season from between 40 and 49 yards this weekend, which could be bad news for his long-term job security. But we're streaming kickers so the long-term isn't much of a concern for us; as long as Green Bay's offense is rolling like it has been, its kicker will likely be a strong weekly option, whether that kicker is Narveson or not. With ten points, he tied for 9th last week.

Update: the Packers signed Brandon McManus two hours after publishing.

Chase McLaughlin (1 FG on 1 attempt, 6 XPs, 9 points)

Some models will try to find offenses likely to "stall out" in field goal range. Our model doesn't-- it mostly just targets the kickers on the teams that will likely have the best days. Tampa lived up to expectations-- the Buccaneers (51 points) were the only team to outscore the Lions (47 points) last week-- but because their offense was "too good", McLaughlin spent most of his day kicking extra points rather than field goals and finished well behind Bates. But if you kick enough of them, extra points add up; McLaughlin was still the 11th-highest-scoring kicker on the week.

Cairo Santos (0 FGs on 1 attempts, 5 XPs, 5 points)

Another offense that performed a bit too well, the Bears scored five touchdowns against Jacksonville and Santos' lone attempt-- a 43-yarder-- was blocked. His five points tied for 20th in Week 6.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 30 weekly recommendations. Those 30 kickers have averaged 7.07 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 17th at the position. Our top three picks average 8.28 points, which would rank 10th.

Anyone selecting at random from among our top picks would have 49.7 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (51), Brandon Aubrey (60), Harrison Butker (46), Jake Elliott (34), Ka'imi Fairbairn (53), Younghoe Koo (57), Jake Moody (51), Evan McPherson (45), Cameron Dicker (43), Jason Sanders (36), Tyler Bass (45), and Jason Myers (42) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).

Six out of twelve picks have outperformed our streamers. On average, drafted kickers have scored 47.4 points, about 0.4 points per game less than our streaming recommendations.

Week 7 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.