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 15 Kicker Results

Jake Bates (0 FGs on 1 attempt, 6 XPs, 6 points)

The pre-game betting line predicted a close, high-scoring affair, and the Bills/Lions game delivered. Bates missed his lone attempt from 52 yards, but kicked six extra points. This tied him for 19th last week.

Greg Joseph (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 2 XPs, 8 points)

Zane Gonzalez practiced all through Week 15, but the Washington Commanders felt he wasn't healthy enough to go and elevated Greg Joseph from their practice squad to kick instead. Joseph missed from 54 yards and had another 45-yard conversion taken off the board by a defensive penalty (Washington eventually scored a touchdown on the drive). Still, with eight points he tied for 10th among kickers.

Will Reichard (3 FGs on 3 attempts, 3 XPs, 12 points)

The Vikings easily handled the Bears, and Reichard converted from 52, 31, and 46 yards, adding a trio of extra points to finish with 12 points, which tied for 3rd among kickers.

Cade York (1 FG on 1 attempt, 4 XPs, 7 points)

York missed an extra point, and his lone make came from 21 yards. He finished the day with 7 points, which ranked 12th for the week.

Chad Ryland (3 FGs on 3 attempts, 3 XPs, 12 points)

The Cardinals had more than enough firepower against the New England Patriots, with Ryland accounting for 12 of the team's 30 points, which was good enough to tie for 3rd place.

A Note on Jake Bates

Four 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).

Bates ranks 7th among kickers since then. Because he is once again a "great play" in Week 16, you should continue holding and starting him if you have him.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 75 weekly recommendations. Those 75 kickers have averaged 7.89 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 8.47 points, which would rank 4th.

Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would have 127.0 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (110), Brandon Aubrey (128), Harrison Butker (108), Jake Elliott (103), Ka'imi Fairbairn (136), Younghoe Koo (107), Jake Moody (107), Evan McPherson (103), Cameron Dicker (118), Jason Sanders (110), Tyler Bass (119), and Jason Myers (103) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).

Our streamers are outscoring 10 out of the top 12 kickers from preseason. On average, drafted kickers have scored 112.7 points, about 1 point per game less than our streaming recommendations. 

Week 16 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.