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.
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.
Matt Prater (0 FGs on 0 attempts, 1 XP, 1 point)
Week 10 saw Matt Prater finally creep past the 50% rostered mark in NFL.com fantasy leagues, which means he won’t be eligible for us going forward. His send-off was… underwhelming, to say the least. The Bills were blown out by the 2-7 Dolphins and fell a game back from the Patriots, Colts, and Broncos in the race for the AFC playoff bye. Prater made his lone attempt of the game for a single point, finishing 25th among kickers.
Michael Badgley (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 1 XP, 7 points)
Badgley missed an extra point to start the game, then lost a second opportunity as the team went for 2 to make it back up. He also missed a 53-yard field goal. On the other hand, he did convert from 44 yards at the end of regulation to send the game into overtime, where the Colts eventually secured the victory. His 7 points tied for 9th on the week.
Jason Myers (3 FGs on 3 attempts, 5 XPs, 14 points)
Myers’ week was a good example of why you shouldn’t try to avoid kickers on high-scoring teams. Seattle raced to an early 35-0 lead and led 38-7 at the half, then took their foot off the gas in the second half, staging a pair of long run-heavy clock-killing drives that stalled out in field goal range. Myers finished with 14 points, which led all players on the week.
Harrison Mevis (0 FGs on 0 attempts, 6 XPs, 6 points)
Last week, I wrote of Rams kicker Joshua Karty: “Karty is perhaps the best kicker in the league at the new style of kickoff, which is how he’s lasted this far into the season. Still, don’t be surprised if the team makes a change in the coming weeks.” The Rams indeed made the switch, elevating Harrison Mevis (the so-called “Thiccer Kicker”) from the practice squad before Sunday’s game. Mevis spent the day kicking extra points as the Rams scored touchdowns on six of their eight offensive drives. His six points ranked 11th for the week.
Cairo Santos (1 FG on 1 attempt, 3 XPs, 6 points)
This was the second straight week Santos snuck into our recommendations as Caleb Williams and the Bears offense showed some uncharacteristic signs of life. He’s unlikely to become a series mainstay like Badgley or Prater, but he’ll likely come back up whenever Chicago has a good matchup. Last week, he finished with six points, good for an 11th-place finish.
To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 50 weekly recommendations. Those 40 kickers have averaged 7.52 points. Our top three weekly picks average 7.80 points (compared to a long-run average of 7.67). That would currently tie for 6th 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.
The average of our top three freely available kickers each week would score 78.0 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 72.9, giving us an advantage of more than 0.5 points per game.
**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.**
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