Value-based drafting for Kickers in the 2018 Fantasy Football Season
According to our machine learning models and the Fantasy Outliers team, these Kickers could return higher value than ADP and ECR in the 2018 Fantasy Football season.

Kickers. Can’t live with ’em; can’t live without ’em. A good kicker can help you have a better fantasy football team without you even realizing it. A bad kicker can take away some of the benefit of drafting a Todd Gurley. On top of that, a good kicker can be one of the better value finds on your team — often taken in the last round or two.
But can you predict them? We will try. Every year, we make predictions for: Points per Opportunity, Opportunities per Game, and Games Played. From these, other metrics like the ones we’ll discuss below can be derived. Our dataset includes data from a wide range of sources, but it does not have all the data. That’s why we think combining our models’ outputs with human opinions will lead to better results than either by itself. Hence, a few (not many) of the projections below have been hand adjusted.
For kickers, we will show you:
- Weekly Value: This compares individual Points per Game projections to the average Pts/Gm projection of the top 20 projected players at a given position. It can be interpreted as average points won/lost versus position (against the top 20 players).
So without further ado, let’s get to it…
Fantasy Outliers’ Weekly Value Projections for Kicker
This Average Weekly Value chart shows how many points our models think a player is going to win/lose your team against the top 20 starters at kicker. If you’re in a 12-team/1K league, the numbers will be a little lower, but the relative rankings should be similar.

- Caleb Sturgis is projected to be the 3rd best kicker this year and his expert consensus was #31 a week ago. He has apparently won the job over Roberto Aguayo. He could be a great value find in tail end of your draft
- Stephen Gostkowski has been a top three kicker in 4 of 5 of the last seasons if not longer. But you’ll have to pay the price for the name and reduced risk.
- You could also probably grab Mike Nugent (Oak) or Kai Forbath (Min) for a replacement level (or better) kicker in the last round.
Finding Kicker Draft Value versus Expert Consensus
Top 20 ECR rankings on the y-axis and corresponding Fantasy Outliers Weekly Value rankings on the x-axis. Anyone in the top left of the graph is a potential value find. Green means they have a projected positive value versus top 20 players at their position.

- I don’t think you can go wrong with Gostkowski, Bryant, Butker, or Elliot. To me, it’s worth a before-last-round pick to get a starting kicker
- Justin Tucker is not worth a high draft pick, according to our models. So grab him if he slides a bit. That said, I’ve heard people say they’re high on Baltimore’s offense this year, so it’s possible he’s worth it — but not according to our models.
For the full experience, our 2018 Fantasy Football Season Projections are now available for free in this Glorious Google Sheet.

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Model performance: How we used machine learning to beat ESPN’s yearly and weekly projections in the 2017 fantasy football season
- Can machine learning help improve your fantasy football draft — Comparison of Fantasy Outliers’ yearly models’ 2017 fantasy football draft performance versus ESPN and Expert Consensus Rankings
- How Artificial Intelligence (AI) beat ESPN in Fantasy Football — Summary of results of Fantasy Outliers’ weekly predictive models vs. ESPN during Weeks 6–16 of the 2017 NFL regular season
- Hey everyone, we beat ESPN — Part 1. Background and Methodology — Comparison of fantasy football weekly model performance of Fantasy Outliers vs. ESPN during Weeks 6–16 of the 2017 NFL season for Standard and PPR scoring formats
- Hey everyone, we beat ESPN — Part 2. Results — Comparison of fantasy football weekly model performance of Fantasy Outliers vs. ESPN during Weeks 6–16 of the 2017 NFL season for Standard and PPR scoring formats

