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
Austin Seibert (4 FGs on 4 attempts, 4 XPs, 16 points)
Last week, we saw the best game from our top recommendation since at least 2020. This week we got the 2nd-best game; the Commanders rolled over the hapless Panthers even without Jayden Daniels for most of the game and Seibert put up 16 points, the top mark of the week.
Will Reichard (3 FGs on 3 attempts, 2 XPs, 11 points)
The second great game from our second "Great Play" of the week. Our model had been off to a slow start, but the last two weeks have completely reversed that. Reichard hit from 42, 48, and an impressive 57 yards. He also lost an extra point opportunity as the Vikings went for two to try to build a 3-point lead late in the 4th quarter. (Unfortunately for Minnesota, the conversion failed.) Reichard tied for 6th among fantasy kickers.
Joshua Karty (0 FGs on 1 attempt, 2 XPs, 2 points)
Karty didn't just come up small in the box score, he also missed an extra point and hit the upright on a 35-yard chip shot; these are the kind of misses that are especially troubling for a young kicker's job security. I don't think Karty is at risk in the short term, but I suspect the ice might have gotten a lot thinner going forward. For fantasy purposes, his 2 points ranked 26th in Week 7.
Jason Myers (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 4 XPs, 10 points)
Myers' day included a 59-yarder in the 4th quarter as the Seahawks turned a close game into a rout. It was the second-longest kick of his career. His 10 points tied for 8th among kickers.
Anders Carlson (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 0 XPs, 6 points)
Last week, Jake Moody got hurt, and the 49ers used Matthew Wright as an emergency kicker. This week, they replaced Wright with Anders Carlson. As I always say, the model is picking teams instead of kickers, so we'll always recommend and evaluate whoever the team eventually settles on. (In fact, mid-week kicker changes often work to our advantage, allowing us to access top offenses whose kickers are usually unavailable.)
On the positive side of the ledger, Carlson set a new career-long with a 55-yarder in the first quarter. On the negative, he hit the upright on his first extra point attempt and San Francisco went for two after their next touchdown to try to make up the lost point. Overall, Carlson ranked 13th in what proved to be a top-heavy week at the position.
Kicker Results To Date
To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 35 weekly recommendations. Those 35 kickers have averaged 7.34 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 14th at the position. Our top three picks average 8.48 points, which would rank 7th.
Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would have 59.3 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (62), Brandon Aubrey (66), Harrison Butker (56), Jake Elliott (38), Ka'imi Fairbairn (63), Younghoe Koo (59), Jake Moody (57), Evan McPherson (48), Cameron Dicker (58), Jason Sanders (40), Tyler Bass (55), and Jason Myers (52) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).
Our streamers are now outscoring 9 out of the top 12 kickers. On average, drafted kickers have scored 54.5 points, about 0.7 points per game less than our streaming recommendations. We're currently riding high after a pair of big weeks, so I expect this to regress a bit going forward... but in the meantime, we can enjoy it while it lasts.
Week 8 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.
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