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 17 Kicker Results

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

The Rams continued their trend of low-scoring slugfests, but fortunately, a pair of field goals salvaged Karty's day. He scored 7 points in Week 17, which tied for 12th among kickers.

Jake Bates (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 2 XPs, 8 points)

Bates had his first extra point of the day blocked, lost an opportunity later as the Lions ran a 2-point conversion to make that point up, and then missed his final extra point. Altogether, he lost out on three points in the process. He still made a pair of field goals-- one from 57 yards-- to finish with 8 points on the day, which ranked 8th among kickers.

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

York hit the upright from 33 yards on a game-winning overtime field goal attempt, but fortunately for him, his defense got a stop and the Bengals scored a touchdown to secure the victory. York's 6 points ranked 15th among kickers in Week 17.

Will Reichard (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Reichard nailed a pair of field goals, including a 50-yarder as time expired in the first half, and finished with 9 points, which tied for the 5th-best total of the week.

Matt Gay (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 3 XPs, 9 points)

The Colts' defense had one of the most disastrous showings in recent NFL history, but the offense did its part against the Giants, scoring 33 points, 9 of them from the kicker. Gay did miss a field goal from 54 yards, but it wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome. He tied for 5th among all kickers for the week.

Final Results from Jake Bates

Heading into Week 12, I noted that Jake Bates was about to cross the 50% rostered threshold that would render him ineligible for streaming, but that I anticipated he would remain a great play the rest of the way, so managers were free to add him and hold him.

He was, indeed, a top recommendation every week. He finished 8th among all kickers since then, just three points shy of 4th place.

Kicker Results For 2024

This season, Rent-a-Kicker made 85 weekly recommendations. Those 85 kickers averaged 7.95 points, compared to 7.75 in 2023, 6.82 in 2022, 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, and 7.39 in 2019. After giving every other kicker 6 points for their bye or any other missed games, that average would rank 8th at the position. Our top three picks averaged 8.39 points, which would rank 4th.

Managers selecting randomly from among our top three picks each week would have finished with an average of 142.7 points. The Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP were Justin Tucker (127), Brandon Aubrey (143), Harrison Butker (122), Jake Elliott (129), Ka'imi Fairbairn (143), Younghoe Koo (119), Jake Moody (116), Evan McPherson (115), Cameron Dicker (142), Jason Sanders (135), Tyler Bass (133), and Jason Myers (115) (giving each kicker 6 points for every game missed to account for the typical historical replacement value).

Our streamers outscored every single top-12 kicker except for two: Aubrey and Fairbairn, who beat our average by 0.3 points each. Not 0.3 points per game, but 0.3 points for the entire season-- a difference of 0.02 points per game. On average, drafted kickers scored 7.54 points per game, about 0.85 less than our top three weekly streamers.

In total, ten teams saw their kickers score 130 or more points this year. Just four of those teams saw their kickers taken among the Top 12 at the position-- the Cowboys, Texans, Chiefs, and 49ers. But the starting kickers for the Chiefs and 49ers scored around 7.5 points per game for the year; they only topped 130 because both teams averaged over 10 points per game from the position in weeks their starting kicker missed.

According to Footballguys ADP data, the top kicker this year (Chris Boswell) was the 19th player off the board at the position. The Vikings' combo of Will Reichard and John Parker Romo finished second; Reichard was the 20th kicker taken. Jake Bates and Chase McLaughlin tied for 5th, and they were the 18th and 28th kickers taken, respectively. Wil Lutz was the 7th-best kicker on the season despite being the 24th-best kicker in the draft. Washington (Austin Seibert) and Green Bay (Brayden Narveson) scored 130 points despite opening the season with kickers who weren't among the Top 32 drafted in fantasy.

There really is no reason to spend anything more than the bare minimum on the position. Doing so does not improve your results any.

Week 18 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.