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 16 Kicker Results

Jake Bates (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 4 XPs, 10 points)

Bates almost became a fantasy football legend with a 65-yard field goal as time expired in the first half, but his attempt came up short. He still scored 10 points and finished as the 5th-best kicker on the week, hopefully propelling many of his teams into the finals in the process.

Cade York (1 FG on 2 attempts, 3 XPs, 6 points)

York was wide left from 47 yards but true from 59 as time expired in the first half. His six points tied for 17th among kickers.

Brandon McManus (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 4 XPs, 10 points)

McManus possibly could have had an even better day if the Saints had shown any signs of life; the Packers opened up the depth chart in their blowout win with nine different players recording a rush attempt (the second-highest single-game total in NFL history) and only had four meaningful drives in the second half. As it was, his ten points also tied for 5th in Week 16.

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

The Cardinals may have lost to the Panthers, but they certainly made a game of it; Ryland's 12 points were 4th for the week.

Joshua Karty (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 1 XP, 7 points)

Karty hit the upright on one of his extra point attempts but otherwise scored seven points, which tied for 14th among all kickers.

A Note on Jake Bates

Five 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 has graded as a "great play" in every week since then, and he's finished 8th among all kickers in scoring over that span. We're now into the championship week for most leagues. Bates has finally fallen out of "great play" status, but he still ranks among the Top 5 "available" kickers, so unless you have a better option, you can continue to start him.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 80 weekly recommendations. Those 80 kickers have averaged 7.96 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 7th at the position. Our top three picks average 8.48 points, which would rank 4th.

Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would have 135.7 points so far. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (120), Brandon Aubrey (142), Harrison Butker (117), Jake Elliott (118), Ka'imi Fairbairn (143), Younghoe Koo (113), Jake Moody (112), Evan McPherson (109), Cameron Dicker (126), Jason Sanders (127), Tyler Bass (125), and Jason Myers (109) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).

Our streamers are now outscoring 10 out of the top 12 kickers from preseason. On average, drafted kickers have scored 121.8 points, about 0.9 points per game less than our streaming recommendations. 

Next week, we'll look at the final results for the season and compare to years past.

Week 17 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.