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 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 Results

Jake Elliott (2 FG attempts, 1 FG, 2 XPs, 5 points)

Elliot has been a thorn in our side all season; the Philadelphia Eagles rank 2nd in the NFL in scoring, but their kicker ranks just 25th despite playing every game. Why? Because Elliott leads the NFL in extra point attempts but somehow ranks 33rd in field goal attempts... in a 32-team league (Matthew Wright has 18 field goal attempts in six games with the Steelers and Chiefs compared to Elliott's 15 with the Eagles).

This isn't a problem inherent to playing with a good offense; the rest of the Top 5 kickers, in extra point attempts, average 27 field goal attempts and 108 points, a total that would rank 7th on the season instead of 25th. Regardless of the causes, an injury to Jalen Hurts means, hopefully, we won't be relying on Elliott again any time soon. His five points tied for 22nd last week.

Greg Joseph (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 4 XPs, 7 points)

An illustration of why my model penalizes kickers on teams that are large underdogs: the Colts and Vikings both scored 36 points in regulation, but the Colts got there by first staking a 33-0 lead, while the Vikings got there after mounting the largest comeback in NFL history. Partially as a result, the Colts' kicker scored 18 points in regulation, while the Vikings' kicker scored 4 (though he thankfully added another 3 in overtime). When trailing teams score, they typically score touchdowns and often follow those touchdowns up with two-point conversions. The problem, of course, is predicting in advance which teams will face huge deficits; the Vikings, after all, were favored by 4.5 points. But we try our best. Joseph's 7 points ranked 11th on the week.

Cameron Dicker (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 2 XPs, 5 points)

The Chargers and Titans played a surprisingly low-scoring game and Dicker only had two points until a game-winning field goal with just seconds remaining. His five points tied for 22nd.

Wil Lutz (0 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 3 XPs, 3 points)

The Saints had the unfortunate distinction of being one of two teams without a field goal attempt, and unlike the Bears, they can't even blame it on the quality of the opposition. Lutz's three points tied for 28th among kickers.

Mason Crosby (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 3 XPs, 6 points)

Crosby had a relatively uneventful day, scoring 6 points and tying for 14th among kickers.

Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 75 weekly recommendations. Those 75 kickers have averaged 6.65 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 19th at the position (after giving 6 points to every kicker to account for byes). Our top weekly recommendation averages just 6.27 points, and every highlighted kicker with a great matchup averages 6.68, marks that would rank 21st and 19th.

Here are the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP along with how many points they've scored to date in parentheses: Justin Tucker (122), Tyler Bass (127), Matt Gay (92), Harrison Butker (106), Daniel Carlson (122), Evan McPherson (105), Matt Prater (83), Ryan Succop (101), Brandon McManus (96), Nick Folk (124), Dustin Hopkins (93), and Rodrigo Blankenship (88). (All kickers are credited with 6 additional points for every week they missed)

So far, the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP average 104.9 points compared to 100.1 from the average of all of our great plays.

Week 16 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.**

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