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 6 Kicker Results

Every week, we highlight the Top 5 recommendations from our model who are available on waivers in at least 50% of fantasy leagues (per NFL.com roster data). Here's how last week's top options fared.

Michael Badgley (1 FG on 1 attempt, 4 XPs, 7 points)

Over the first three weeks, half of the Colts' red zone trips stalled out and resulted in field goals. Over the last three weeks, not one of the Colts' red zone trips has stalled out, leaving Badgley subsisting almost entirely on extra points. In the long run, that will prove to be a short-term aberration; the field goals will return at some point. Badgley ranked 15th among kickers last week.

Lucas Havrisik (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Last Tuesday, I strongly recommended Packers' kicker Brandon McManus in Week 6. Last Wednesday, McManus cropped up on the injury report with a quadriceps injury, but insisted he would play on Sunday. Last Saturday, the Packers signed Lukas Havrisik, and then on Sunday, he tied for the 7th-best fantasy kicker of the week. As always, the model's recommendations apply to the team and not the individual kicker, so fortunately for us, we get to count him.

Players like Havrisik are my favorite part of this column; available on waivers in approximately 100% of leagues, he went from unknown (he played nine games for the Rams in 2023, though you'd be forgiven for not remembering) to winning meaningful fantasy matchups in the course of 24 hours.

Matt Prater (0 FGs on 0 Attempts, 2 XPs, 2 points)

I'm not sure what's up with the Bills; after scoring at least 30 in each of their first four games, they've now put up back-to-back offensive duds and Prater has gone from looking like found money (a kicker with Top 6 potential who was available for free as an injury replacement) to looking like a dirty penny. Buffalo's bye comes at a good time for them to right the ship. Prater's 2 points ranked 29th for fantasy in Week 6.

Joshua Karty (1 FG on 2 attempts, 2 XPs, 5 points)

Something definitely seems to be up with Karty—he's missed six kicks so far this season. Four have been blocked, which ordinarily wouldn't seem like his fault, but with that many in such a short span, the kicker would seem to bear some of the blame. And then in Week 6, he hit the uprights on a 26-yard chip shot before barely sneaking a 36-yarder through. He remains one of the best in the league at kickoffs, which helps his case, but his seat must surely be getting warm.

We'll keep recommending him as long as Vegas likes the Rams and Karty has the job. (If he loses it, we'll recommend his replacement instead.) For week 6, his 5 points tied for 21st.

Wil Lutz (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 1 XP, 7 points)

It's fitting that they played in England, because the Broncos and the Jets played a game only a Soccer fan could love—Combining for five field goals, one touchdown, and a safety. Because of the scoring mix, Lutz (whose team scored 13 points) accounted for as many points as Badgley (whose team scored 31), though the Colts' performance bodes better going forward.

Kicker Results To Date

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 30 weekly recommendations. Those 30 kickers have averaged 7.40 points. Our top three weekly picks average 7.61 points-- compared to a long-run average of 7.67. That would currently rank 12th at the position, and would have ranked 11th at the end of last season.

Meanwhile, here are the Top 12 kickers by preseason ADP, along with how many points they have scored so far this season. For any week a kicker didn't play (whether due to injury or bye), I will add six points to account for replacement-level performance.

• Brandon Aubrey (54)
• Cameron Dicker (53)
• Jake Bates (45)
• Chris Boswell (45)
• Chase McLaughlin (53)
• Ka'imi Fairbairn (48)
• Harrison Butker (47)
• Jake Elliott (34)
• Cam Little (43)
• Tyler Bass (36)
• Wil Lutz (38)
• Younghoe Koo (32)

The average of our top three freely available kickers each week would score 45.7 points to this point, while the average of the top 12 kickers by preseason ADP would score 44.0, giving us an advantage of about 0.3 points per game.

(As an aside, 2025 has been a very bizarre year so far for drafted kickers, precisely because they've performed to expectations. The correlation between draft order and production to this point is 0.844; typically, it's much closer to zero. This means the kickers we expected to be the best have indeed been the best. Will this hold up for the rest of the year, or is it just a small sample fluke?)

Week 7 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. The top three players will be included in our running average. 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.**