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 13 Results

Jason Sanders (1 FG attempt, 1 FG, 6 XPs, 9 points)

Yet another "way too many touchdowns" day from the Dolphins offense, but hey, when you reach the end zone six times even extra points start to add up. Sanders tied for 6th among kickers.

Matt Ammendola (3 FG attempts, 3 FGs, 1 XP, 10 points)

Ammendola is probably one of the worst starting kickers in the NFL today, but NFL kicker talent is so tightly concentrated that the difference between the worst and above-average is virtually negligible. Ammendola missed a pair of 50+ yarders last week but connected this week from 29, 38, and 38, chipping in an extra point to finish with 10, tied for 3rd on the week.

Riley Patterson (2 FG attempts, 2 FGs, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Another kicker with a bounce-back week; Patterson scored zero last week but put up 9 points on Sunday to tie for 6th at the position.

Jake Moody (0 FG attempts, 0 FGs, 6 XPs, 6 points)

A field goal attempt would have been nice, but San Francisco was unstoppable against Philadelphia, so Moody lived on extra points alone. He finished tied for 15th.

Brandon McManus (2 FG attempts, 1 FG, 4 XPs, 7 points)

McManus missed from 48 yards in regulation, and Jacksonville couldn't get into position for him to try again in overtime. His seven points tied for 10th among kickers.

A Tip for Holding Kickers

In Week 4, I gave a quick rule of thumb for when to hold on to a kicker instead of streaming. As a recap, the order of players within a tier is only of minor importance, but each tier you drop down costs you about half a point per game in expectation. I'd start a kicker I wanted to hold over an option rated one tier higher, but I'd rather avoid starting one over a kicker rated two tiers higher if I could, and I'd never start a kicker over an option rated three or four tiers higher.

I also provided a list of kickers I would consider holding rather than continuing to stream. Since that seems potentially useful, I'm going to turn it into a recurring weekly feature. Here's the current list (in no particular order): Justin Tucker, Tyler Bass, Jake Elliott, Jason Sanders, Brandon Aubrey, Jake Moody, and Riley Patterson. Until Kansas City's offense shows more signs of life, we are reluctantly dropping Harrison Butker from the "plug and play" list for perhaps the first time in this column's history.

Any other kicker is, in my opinion, expendable for anyone with a better matchup this week.

Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 65 weekly recommendations. Those 60 kickers have averaged 7.63 points, compared to 6.82 in 2022, 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, and 7.39 in 2019. That average would currently rank 11th at the position (though many of the players ahead have spent significant time on waivers, as well). Our top weekly recommendation averages 6.31 points per game, while all recommended "great plays" average 7.92. The former figure would rank 25th; the latter figure would rank 7th.

If you've been following along, you should expect to have scored between 82 (the average of our top picks) and 103 points (the average of all our great plays). Here are the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP as well as how many points they would have gotten you (giving a 6-point bonus for any weeks they may have missed): Justin Tucker (104), Daniel Carlson (84), Harrison Butker (101), Tyler Bass (94), Evan McPherson (90), Younghoe Koo (96), Jason Meyers (106), Jake Elliott (103), Cameron Dicker (93), Graham Gano (71), Brandon McManus (105), Matt Gay (104), for an average of 95.9 points. Our streaming amalgam has either outscored 8 of those kickers (the average of all "great plays") or been tied or outscored by 11 of those kickers (the "top pick"), which is still a very weird split.

Week 14 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