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 14 Kicker Results

The Bengals were our #2-rated situation last week, but their kicker, Evan McPherson, was rostered in too many leagues to choose as a streamer. Cincinnati surprisingly placed McPherson on Injured Reserve late last week, though, adding Cade York to replace him. York scored 9 points and tied for 6th among kickers, but because we did not highlight him in last week's column, we won't count him in this week's results.

Jake Bates (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 4 XPs, 10 points)

Bates continues his tremendous season, finishing with 10 points, including the game-winner as time expired. He was the 5th-best fantasy kicker of the week.

Chase McLaughlin (0 FGs on 0 attempts, 4 XPs, 4 points)

McLaughlin, on the other hand, had a disappointing Sunday. The Buccaneers scored four touchdowns and turned the ball over three times, leaving McLaughlin with just four points, which tied for 18th on the week.

Will Reichard (0 FGs on 1 attempt, 6 XPs, 6 points)

Returning to action for the first time since Week 9, Reichard hit the upright on his lone attempt of the day (from 47 yards). The Vikings did score six touchdowns which left Reichard with plenty of extra points; his six points were good for 14th among kickers.

Brandon McManus (1 FG on 1 attempt, 4 XPs, 7 points)

The Packers scored 31 points against the Lions, but a game-winning field goal as time expired cost them a shot at overtime. McManus scored 7 points, which tied for 11th in Week 14

Chad Ryland (1 FG on 2 attempts, 1 XP, 4 points)

Ryland made a kick from 28 yards and hit the uprights from 40. He finished with 4 points, which ranked 18th among kickers.

A Note on Jake Bates

Three 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).

It's a good thing, because Bates is tied for 4th among kickers since then. Because he is once again a "great play" in Week 15, you should continue holding and starting him if you have him.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 70 weekly recommendations. Those 70 kickers have averaged 7.81 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 8.45 points, which would rank 3rd.

Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would have 118.3 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (105), Brandon Aubrey (116), Harrison Butker (105), Jake Elliott (94), Ka'imi Fairbairn (128), Younghoe Koo (100), Jake Moody (101), Evan McPherson (97), Cameron Dicker (113), Jason Sanders (104), Tyler Bass (107), and Jason Myers (96) (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 105.5 points, about 0.9 points per game less than our streaming recommendations. 

Week 15 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.