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 11 Kicker Results

Jake Bates (1 FG on 1 attempt, 7 XPs, 10 points)

The Lions' nine drives against the Jaguars went: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, field goal, and then an 11-play drive to run out the last 6:45 of the game. It was about as dominant of a showing as you could possibly have, though Bates' fantasy managers appreciated the field goal attempt at the end there. Bates tied for the 2nd-best performance in Week 11.

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

We bent the rules a bit last week to count Jake Moody; he was rostered in just over 50% of NFL.com fantasy leagues, which is our threshold for inclusion, but I also suspect a large percentage of Rent-a-Kicker readers had him on their roster already given his ranking from the week before. Ironically, Moody underperformed and our numbers would have looked better without him, but as I said last week, the whole point of tracking results is to estimate how a typical reader would be faring, and unfortunately, I suspect a lot of readers wound up with his 5 points last week-- tied for 19th among all kickers.

Jake Elliott (2 FGs on 4 attempts, 2 XPs, 8 points)

Elliott had the potential for a huge week; he missed field goals from 44 and 51 yards and added a missed extra point, too, leaving potentially 7 more points on the table. Even without them, he still scored enough to tie for 10th at the position.

Jason Sanders (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 4 XPs, 10 points)

The entire Dolphins offense has had a rough year so we haven't seen Sanders' name as often this year as we did last, but Miami had a great matchup and delivered with their highest scoring output of the season, including ten points for Sanders-- enough to earn a share of 2nd place in Week 11.

Joshua Karty (0 FGs on 1 attempt, 4 XPs, 4 points)

Karty hit the upright on his lone field goal attempt-- a 26-yard chip-shot-- and finished the day with just four points, tying for 22nd and beating out only three kickers on the week.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 55 weekly recommendations. Those 55 kickers have averaged 7.69 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 9th at the position. Our top three picks average 8.27 points, which would rank 4th.

Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would have 91 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (86), Brandon Aubrey (89), Harrison Butker (87), Jake Elliott (73), Ka'imi Fairbairn (102), Younghoe Koo (80), Jake Moody (85), Evan McPherson (77), Cameron Dicker (88), Jason Sanders (79), Tyler Bass (90), and Jason Myers (72) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).

Our streamers are now outscoring 11 out of the top 12 kickers from preseason. On average, drafted kickers have scored 7.64 points, about 0.64 points per game less than our streaming recommendations.

(This is among the best showings our model has made, so don't be surprised if it regresses a bit over the coming weeks. I typically expect us to outscore 50-66% of drafted kickers, not all but one of them.)

A Note on Jake Bates

Currently, NFL.com roster percentages show Bates is inexplicably still available in 57% of leagues, which means we still get to count him among our streamers, which is good because he is yet again the top recommended kicker of the week. I suspect that this will be the last week he tops that 50% availability mark, though-- the Lions just posted their second 50-point showing of the year, nearly matching their total from their previous 94 years combined (three such games).

I often say that one of the reasons to stream kickers is we don't know before the year who the top options are going to be, so we're just as likely to find them off waivers as in the draft. Bates looks like he might be a top option this year, and if you've stumbled your way into him, it's very reasonable to stop streaming and start him the rest of the way (or at least until the Lions' offense looks mortal).

As a result, I'm going to continue to count Bates' among our streaming options at least until such a time as I say he's probably not worth holding anymore. Again, the point of tracking our results is to estimate how much a typical reader might have produced, and many typical readers will undoubtedly find themselves continuing to start Bates even as he slips past the 50% rostered mark.

Week 12 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.