Look at you! Checking out the 2013 Fantasy Kicker Rankings! You should be commended and lauded for your thirst for Fantasy knowledge and your ever-growing need to be on top of your Fantasy game at all times.
Now, you must understand that kicker rankings are the easiest/toughest to assemble. We have a great idea of what the top kickers will be, based on their past history and their team’s offense. But really, a kicker – more than any other position in Fantasy Football – is flying up and down the rankings in perpetuity it seems.
If a kicker is in a groove and he gets a ton of opportunities, then he’ll stick in the top of the rankings. But if he or his offense falters regularly, then you’ll end up looking elsewhere; it’s as simple as that.
2013 Fantasy Kicker Rankings: From Top to Bottom
The closer position in Fantasy Baseball is the closest thing I can compare to Fantasy kickers. Not in importance, necessarily, since a closer is completely responsible for one-tenth of all Rotisserie leagues. What I mean is – a closer and a kicker can get hot or cold and be out of a job tomorrow. You don’t see that with a wide receiver so much.
Falcons K Matt Bryant made a career-high 33 field goals last season. Photo Credit: Atlanta_Falcons
If you look at the best kicker from last season, which was Patriots K Stephen Gostkowski, you’ll notice he led the position with 171 Fantasy points, not counting bonus points.
The 12th-best Fantasy kicker, Adam Vinatieri, scored 124 Fantasy points, which is a difference of 47 points from the top spot. In a 16-game NFL season, that works out to a difference of just under three Fantasy points a game.
A field goal.
In 2011, David Akers led the position with 184 points, but he was only 54 points better than the 12th-best kicker. The second-best kicker in 2011 was John Kasay with 151 points.
In 2010, there was no standout kicker, with Sebastian Janikowski leading the position with 150 points, and Robbie Gould coming in 12th with 116 points.
In 2009, Nate Kaeding was the top kicker with 152 points, and Kris Brown finished with 110, 11 spots later.
In 2008, Gostkowski led all kickers with 150 points, and Josh Brown was 12th with 124 points.
And finally, in 2007, Mason Crosby led the position with 147 points, and that Vinatieri scored a 12th-best 118 points for the Colts.
So let’s call Akers’ 184 points in 2011 an outlier and look at the rest of the stats.
The difference between the top kicker in any given season and the 12th-best kicker between 2007-11, excluding Akers’ 2011 season, was about 30 points, which works out to about a 1.88-points difference each week.
In a 12-team non-PPR league last season, there were exactly two games that came down to two points or less.
To make a short story long, try to grab a good kicker, but don’t kill yourself in order to do it. If you have a late pick in the final round of your draft, just take what’s left to you. If you have an early pick in the final round, consider grabbing Gostkowski, Prater or Bryant late in the second-to-last round, to beat a couple teams to the punch. But that’s as far as you want to reach at this position.
Remember, last year’s No. 1 kicker entering the season (Akers) came apart and ended up missing an NFL-high 14 field goals.
Breaking news from One Buc Place: K Connor Barth will miss the season due to a torn Achilles tendon. Bucs have signed K Lawrence Tynes.
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) July 17, 2013
2013 Fantasy Kicker Rankings
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Broncos K Matt Prater kicked two or more field goals in eight games last season. Photo Credit: www.iso33.info
As training camps, practices and preseason games happen, we’ll be updating these 2013 Kicker rankings, so come back frequently as your Fantasy Football draft approaches.
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