Photo: USA Today Sports

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 there are a dozen or more starting kickers 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 5 Results

Matthew Wright (2 FG attempts, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Wright lost an extra point attempt on an unconventional 2-point-conversion call late in the game and missed a 41-yard field goal wide right, but on the positive side of the ledger, he also set a franchise record with a made 59-yarder as time expired in the first half. His 6 points ranked 19th among kickers.

Greg Joseph (2 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 3 XPs, 3 points)

Joseph missed a 53-yard attempt as time expired in the first half and had a 51-yarder blocked in the third quarter, and as a result, the Vikings needed to go for a 2-point conversion after a late go-ahead touchdown against the Bears. Joseph's 3 points were worse than 27 other kickers last week.

Riley Patterson (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 0 XPs, 6 points)

The surprising Jaguars were shockingly held to six points against the previously-winless Texans, with kicker Riley Patterson scoring them all to rank 19th on the week.

Wil Lutz (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 4 XPs, 7 points)

Last year we had great success streaming kickers against Detroit's terrible defense. This year it's looking like the Seattle Seahawks might be our preferred target; the Saints scored 39 points against Seattle with Lutz accounting for 7 of them to tie for 16th among kickers.

Cameron Dicker (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 2 XPs, 8 points)

Jake Elliott was ruled out for the game last week, so we count his backup's production, and it's a good thing because Dicker was the most productive of any of our picks with 8 of Philadelphia's 20 points, which ranked 11th for the week.

Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 25 weekly recommendations. Those 25 kickers have averaged 6.60 points, compared to 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, 7.65 in 2019, and 7.43 in 2018. That average would currently rank just 18th at the position. Our top weekly recommendation averages 6.60 points, and every highlighted kicker with a great matchup averages 6.36, marks that would rank 18th and 20th.

Here are the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP along with how many points they've scored to date in parentheses: Justin Tucker (42), Tyler Bass (42), Matt Gay (32), Harrison Butker (32*), Daniel Carlson (53), Evan McPherson (38), Matt Prater (22), Ryan Succop (41), Brandon McManus (37), Nick Folk (37), Dustin Hopkins (26), and Rodrigo Blankenship (33*). (Butker and Blankenship are both credited with all points from their respective backups.)

So far, the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP average 36.3 points compared to 31.8 from the average of all of our great plays, by far the worst performance in Rent-a-Kicker history. It's possible, even likely that our recommendations have cost readers games so far, and that sucks, and I'm really sorry about that. So what am I doing about it?

Absolutely nothing. It would be one thing if this was the model's first season, but this is year five and the model is the model. Nothing has changed (believe me, I've triple-checked to make sure I didn't secretly screw something up somewhere). We've just been getting some unlucky breaks. And I know that it rings hollow when analysts blame their good calls on skill and their bad calls on luck... but here's what I wrote in the final column of last season: "It was easily our best year to date, which is mostly just luck because the model is the same as it's always been, but I'm happy that the model's good fortune is your good fortune."

Ultimately the model averaged about 7.5 points per game every year from 2018 through 2020, finishing as around the 6th-8th best kicker and handily outperforming the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP. Then it caught fire in 2021, averaged about 8.5 points per game, and outscored every kicker but one (who was undrafted in typical 12-team leagues). Now it's opening 2022 ice cold, averaging about 6.5 points per game. Some of that is just a reflection of the fact that scoring is down overall this year (reflected in how many fewer "great plays" we're seeing on a weekly basis), but most of it is not (poor scoring environment doesn't explain why our "good plays" have thus far outperformed our "great plays").

Maybe the Fantasy Gods are balancing the scales after we stole some extra points last year; maybe it's just another example of how random and streaky the position is. Either way, last year I still believed this was the same 7.5 ppg model it had always been, and this year I... still believe this is the same 7.5 ppg model it has always been.

Hopefully, for all of our sakes, the rest of the season will reward that faith.

Week 6 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.**

Great Plays