Rent-a-Kicker: Week 10 – Footballguys

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.

Joshua Karty (0 FGs on 1 attempt, 4 XPs, 4 points)

Karty’s accuracy woes continued on Sunday; he missed a 39-yard field goal and an extra point. The Rams now rank last in the league in field goal percentage and 3rd-worst in extra point percentage. Ordinarily, rankings like this lead to kickers swiftly losing their jobs, but 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 potential for a solid day was there, but with his misses, Karty ranked just 22nd among fantasy kickers last week.

Tyler Loop (0 FGs on 0 attempts, 4 XPs, 4 points)

Lamar Jackson’s return will work to Loop’s benefit in the long run, but last Thursday the Ravens staked a quick 28-6 lead and coasted, leaving Loop with just four extra points on the day. He tied for 22nd among kickers.

Brandon McManus (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 1 XP, 7 points)

Head coach Matt LaFleur said after the team’s 3-point loss to the Panthers that kicker Brandon McManus is still “battling through” health issues since his return, as he missed his third field goal in two weeks. Carolina’s defense also proved unexpectedly stingy, but a pair of made field goals still left McManus with seven points for the week, tied for 13th. Still, McManus had better get healthier soon, or the team might turn back to Lucas Havrisik, who filled in during McManus’ absence.

Chad Ryland (2 FGs on 2 attempts, 3 XPs, 9 points)

Playing the Cowboys’ defense certainly helps, but not many offenses still look potent with the backup quarterback in. The Cardinals with Jacoby Brissett are an exception. Ryland scored nine points in the team’s victory over Dallas, tying for 6th place in Week 9.

Cairo Santos (2 FGs on 3 attempts, 5 XPs, 11 points)

Santos had a 47-yard field goal blocked. He missed a second field goal (also from 47 yards) before an offsides penalty gave the Bears’ offense new life. He also lost an extra point opportunity as the Bears went for two after their final touchdown. Despite this, he was still the 3rd-best fantasy kicker on the week after the Bears and Bengals played a shocking 47-42 game that will go down as an instant classic.

To date, Rent-a-Kicker has made 45 weekly recommendations. Those 40 kickers have averaged 7.60 points. Our top three weekly picks average 7.85 points (compared to a long-run average of 7.67). That would currently rank 8th 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 70.7 points to this point, which is higher than seven of the top twelve kickers by preseason ADP. The average of the top 12 kickers by preseason ADP would score 66.0, 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.**