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 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.
Eddy Piñeiro (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 6 XPs, 12 points)
Virtually everything went San Francisco's way on Monday except for a 64-yard field goal attempt as time expired in the first half, which hit the crossbar. Piñeiro's 12 points were the 4th-highest total of the week.
Evan McPherson (1 FG on 1 attempt, 6 XPs, 9 points)
The Bengals' offense skewed a bit touchdown-heavy against the overmatched Dolphins defense, but any time a team scores 45 points, their kicker is going to have a fairly good day. McPherson's nine points tied for 12th among kickers.
Zane Gonzalez (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 2 XPs, 8 points)
Gonzalez converted from 49 and 40 yards and had a third extra point attempt that was blocked. His eight points tied for 16th in a strong week for kickers across the league.
Wil Lutz (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 2 XPs, 8 points)
Lutz converted from 54 and 22 yards, but hit the upright on an attempt from 44 yards. Like Gonzalez, he finished with 8 points, earning a share of 16th place in Week 16.
Brandon McManus (3 FGs on 3 attempts, 1 XP, 10 points)
Green Bay had the worst offensive day of any of our picks last week, but McManus lucked into a bit of a backdoor cover; his three field goals all came from within 10 yards of the end zone, turning a potential 4-point day into a 10-point day and tying for 7th place among all kickers.
Kicker Results To Date
To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 80 weekly recommendations. Those 80 kickers have averaged 7.63 points. Our top three weekly picks average 7.94 points (compared to a long-run average of 7.67). That would currently rank 5th at the position.
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 (144)
- Cameron Dicker (147)
- Jake Bates (124)
- Chris Boswell (115)
- Chase McLaughlin (119)
- Ka'imi Fairbairn (150)
- Harrison Butker (117)
- Jake Elliott (95)
- Cam Little (124)
- Tyler Bass (96)
- Wil Lutz (108)
- Younghoe Koo (85)
The average of our top three freely available kickers each week would score 127.0 points to this point, which matches or exceeds nine of the top twelve kickers by preseason ADP. The average of the top 12 kickers by preseason ADP would score 118.7 points, trailing our picks by over 0.5 points per game.
