How to Succeed at Picking a Fanduel Kicker
Every season people flock from Fanduel to Draftkings because they are anti-kicker. They play every other sport on Fanduel, but would rather not play NFL on Fanduel because they believe that kickers are luck and take away from the fantasy experience. If you cannot tell, I am not one of those people. My view is the kicker is a value spot where the top dollar play and bottom dollar play are so close I get to choose basically anyone I want. Here is my FanDuel NFL advice on how to pick a kicker in fantasy football.
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The Introduction
Are you ready for some kicker talk? I know I am more than ready. I have even been working on my radio voice for when I record my kicker pods for this season. Nothing gets me more excited than nailing the kicker slot. I would rather hit on the kicker and go bust on the QB any week. Kickers are not 100% no matter what factors you use, but that does not mean you cannot increase the odds of picking correctly. Before we do any looking back I want to look forward to how you pick a kicker.
The First Step: Location
The first thing when picking a kicker is to know the environment in which the team is playing. Is the kicker inside or outside? Kickers who are outside can have weather concerns. How cold is it? Is it raining or windy? These are things you will need to know. While a kicker doesn’t lose points when they miss, they waste a limited number of opportunities to make you fantasy points. This means kickers who are even in skill and likeliness to do well, tend to favor the indoor kicker. Even more so later in the year. Rain also makes kicking a ball hard for multiple reasons. I always fade kickers in rain.
Another factor in location selection to track is the fields a kicker will be kicking at. Not all fields are equal when it comes to kicking ability. Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field is a death trap for most kickers. Boswell has proven that he can make a score there, but those visiting teams can almost always be faded. It is also important to remember we want to focus more on home kickers when we can. This is not a strict rule, but if you are in between on 2 kickers error on the side of the home team.
The Second Step: Vegas
Once you are done picking out what environment your kicker is going to be playing in we want to focus on Vegas to help us. Kickers on teams that are far behind in games tend to be given less opportunity. Teams will go for it more often, or punt from max range instead of risking field position and therefore risking falling behind further. Vegas will give us a source that is pretty good at picking game flow. When looking at Vegas we ideally want teams that are favored, in high scoring or low scoring games. I say low scoring because this means Vegas sees scoring opportunities, but not a lot of TDs. A game with 4 FGs per team might be low scoring on the field, and worth a fade of all players outside of defense and kickers, but they can also give you 20 point kickers.
Other games to focus on are high scoring back and forth brawls. They carry close to the same risk as low scoring games, but they are expected to be going to the very last play. When it comes to kickers we want opportunities, much like taking the top 4 batters in MLB because they get more plate opportunities.
The Third Step: Ability
So now that we have focused on a few areas to start we need to look at one of the most important abilities a kicker needs for your success. The ability to kick it from way out on the field. Kick the ball for 50+ yard field goals and it only takes 2 good kicks in a game for 10 points. The target we really want to get from any kicker for 2x value. Throw in extra points and a close field goal and we are getting to GPP value.
I have always been a big fan of Vinatieri because he has a leg. 2016 which was Veni’s 100th season in the league he was 7 of 9 from 50+. The thing that got the most in his way from being a big time performer for the season was his team. Vini was also 10 of 12 from 40+ all of this means he was good for 4 or 5 points regularly.
We like kickers who will get opportunities but if they are garbage then they will not do anything with those chances. Vini really is getting old, but the best part of kickers is there will be someone else just as good as him to replace him. Each week we really want to focus on the accuracy percent of kickers from the 40 to 50 range and the 50+ hits. This will give us a list of kickers to start with, which we can further break down with Vegas and environment or we can find the Vegas games and build the list of kickers we like.
The Final Step: Price
Well, those are the highlights to picking the right kicker. The most important thing before we close however will be simple. Don’t worry about the price. Pick the best kicker option and only let price change your mind if you absolutely have too for your build. The best kicker price for week 1 2017 is 5000. The lowest priced kicker is 4500. That means if the best option is 4700 don’t grab a 4500 just to be cheap. The difference between 10-15 points and 3 points could be 200. Don’t let 200 cost you a big win.
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I really hope that I see you in slack, just tag PVAaron if you join. You can also find me on twitter here https://twitter.com/dfsarmypvaaron. If you love those kickers, show that love with #kickersarepeople, #learn2build, & #DFSArmy
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