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 13 Kicker Results

Jake Bates (3 FGs on 4 attempts, 2 XPs, 11 points)

Much is made of Detroit's aggression on 4th down, and it certainly costs Bates some points at times-- such as when the Lions passed up a 46-yard field goal to go for it on 4th and 1, only to lose a fumble two plays later. But Bates' performance this year shows that aggression isn't always the drawback it's made out to be; aggressive teams are more likely to reach scoring position in the first place, and even aggressive teams attempt field goals on 4th-and-9 in the red zone. Despite missing his first field goal of the season (on an attempt from 45 yards), Bates scored 11 points, which ranked 6th on the week.

Matthew Wright (4 FGs on 5 attempts, 1 XP, 13 points)

Harrison Butker is one of the best kickers in the league, but he was placed on injured reserve three weeks ago. The Chiefs signed Spencer Shrader to replace him, but Shrader injured his hamstring in practice. As a result, Kansas City turned to Matthew Wright-- the backup to the backup. But our model doesn't care who is kicking for a team (provided he's a professional kicker-- if a team turns to a non-kicker as an emergency fill-in, recommendations no longer apply). Shrader and Wright are perfect illustrations of why; for his career, Wright has converted 85.5% of his attempts, basically identical to the league average. For the week, he hit on 4 of 5, with his lone miss coming up short from 59 yards. His 13 points were 4th-best among kickers in Week 13.

Chase McLaughlin (4 FGs on 5 attempts, 2 XPs, 14 points)

McLaughlin was sitting at 8 points and looking like he was done for the day until Carolina scored a go-ahead touchdown with 30 seconds remaining. The Buccaneers quickly put him in position for a 51-yard kick to tie the game, and after McLaughlin missed his first attempt from 55 yards in overtime, Tampa gave him another opportunity from 30 to win the game. Adding six more points after there were only 30 seconds left in the game is a bit of a back-door cover for our recommendation, but points are points, so we'll take it. McLaughlin was the 2nd-best kicker of the week.

Tyler Bass (0 FGs on 1 attempt, 5 XPs, 5 points)

Bass came up short on his lone attempt from 55 yards, and the Bills were otherwise rarely stopped, scoring five touchdowns. With 5 points, Bass was the 25th-best fantasy kicker.

Joshua Karty (0 FGs on 0 attempts, 3 XPs, 3 points)

Karty fell victim to an especially slow game. The Rams had only three possessions in the first half, one of which ended with a failed 4th-down attempt (in lieu of a 43-yard field goal attempt). They only had four possessions in the second half, three of which ended in touchdowns. Karty's 3 points ranked just 29th on the week.

A Note on Jake Bates

Two weeks ago, I noted that Bates was about to surpass the 50% rostered mark, which would render him ineligible for Rent-a-Kicker consideration. I noted, however, that readers were free to add him at the time and continue to start him for as long as he remained a great play; as a result, I would continue to count him as "eligible" until the model no longer recommended him (at which point I would add a note here that it was probably time to move on).

Because he is once again a "great play" in Week 14, you should continue holding and starting him if you have him.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 65 weekly recommendations. Those 65 kickers have averaged 7.94 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 8th at the position. Our top three picks average 8.59 points, which would rank 4th.

Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks would have 111.7 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (99), Brandon Aubrey (108), Harrison Butker (99), Jake Elliott (92), Ka'imi Fairbairn (122), Younghoe Koo (93), Jake Moody (93), Evan McPherson (91), Cameron Dicker (108), Jason Sanders (92), Tyler Bass (101), and Jason Myers (84) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).

Our streamers are outscoring 11 out of the top 12 kickers from preseason. On average, drafted kickers have scored 98.5 points, which is more than a full point per game less than our streaming recommendations.

I keep suggesting that the model is overperforming and the results are likely to regress, and the results keep defying that expectation; last week was just the third time in five seasons that our top three picks each scored double-digit points.

Week 14 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.