Rent-a-Kicker: Week 3 – Footballguys

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 are drafted before the season and where they finish after the season. No position has a lower correlation between how they score one week and how they score the next. No position has a lower correlation between expected points and actual points.

Additionally, placekicker is the position with the smallest spread between the best and middle-of-the-pack players in fantasy. Finally, most fantasy GMs will only carry one kicker at a time, meaning that at any given time there are a dozen or more starting kickers sitting around on waivers. 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.

Each week I’ll rank the situations each kicker finds himself in (ignoring the talent of the kicker himself) so you can find perfect starting production off the waiver wire.

Week 1 proved to be a goal-filled environment for kicker streamers. Here’s how our featured picks fared:

Jake Bates (3 FGs on 3 attempts, 1 XP, 10 points)

This was a blessing in disguise for us, as the Lions offense hasn’t been as explosive as expected so far this season. Normally, a team that scores less than 20 points doesn’t have a great day. But three failed drives led to three short field goals and Bates scored 10 points, good for 10th on the week.

Jake Elliott (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 1 XP, 7 points)

Elliott did lose an extra point when Philadelphia decided to attempt a late 2-point conversion, but he still finished with 7 points. In a normal season, that would be a pretty strong showing, but this week it was only good for 19th.

Matt Prater (2 FG’s on 2 attempts, 5 XP’s, 11 points)

Prater may be the oldest kicker in the league, but he’s got plenty of life left in him; the Cardinals relied on him to kick from 48 and 57 yards, and he made both. He added five more points as Arizona won on a rout, scored 11, and was tied for sixth place this week. If you added Prater last week, consider holding on to him a little longer — if Arizona’s offense continues to look the way it did, he could easily end up as one of the best kickers in fantasy, especially given his penchant for long field goal attempts.

Joshua Karty (1 FG on 1 attempt, 1 XP, 4 points)

Our kicker model punishes teams that are big underdogs, because the results often look like they did for Karty: the Rams threw away 21- and 25-yard touchdown attempts (as well as a 58-yard attempt, though few coaches would dare to kick that one), and Karty finished with just four points and a miserable 28th place finish. Unfortunately for us, Vegas didn’t expect the game to be quite so one-sided; the Cardinals were only a 1.5-point favorite. But that’s why we picked Prater over Karty last week.

Jason Sanders (1 FG on 1 attempt, 1 XP)

Another offense that hasn’t looked like itself yet this year, the Dolphins couldn’t get anything going against the Bills, even before starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a concussion and lost the game. Sanders matched Karty with 4 points, which tied him for 28th.

I briefly mentioned last week that Week 1 was a target-heavy environment for kicker streamers. In fact, Week 1 had the second-highest number of field goals made of any week in NFL history. At least, it was at the time. Week 2 broke the all-time record for field goals made, so now Week 1 has fallen to third.

The NFL just set a new record for field goals in a single week.

Most field goals in one week, NFL history:
70: 2024 Week 2 (with one half to go)
69: 2016 week 16
68: 2024 Week 1
67: 2012 week 1
65: 2023 week 3

— Quirky Research (@QuirkyResearch) September 17, 2024

One week could potentially be a fluke, but two weeks is a trend. With the league looking like a field goal fest, I think we’re going to crush our long-term average of 7.5 points per game. But we’re going to have to do that, because everyone else is going to crush their long-term average, too.

So far, Rent-a-Kicker has made ten weekly recommendations. Those ten kickers have averaged 8.0 points, compared to 7.75 in 2023, 6.82 in 2022, 8.45 in 2021, 7.39 in 2020, and 7.39 in 2019. That average would currently rank just 21st at the position, but rankings aren’t all that meaningful on such small sample sizes. Our best players are averaging 9 points per game, which would rank 12th, while all of the great players are averaging 8.33 points per game, which would rank 21st.

We’ll continue to track averages and rankings over time and in a few weeks we’ll begin comparing them to the Top 12 kickers based on the preseason ADP.

Here’s a list of the teams with the best matchups based on Vegas projections and stadium, along with each team’s projected kicker. The top five players on waivers in more than 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 apply specifically to situations; teams occasionally swap kickers mid-week, but all recommendations apply equally to whichever kicker ultimately gets the start.