What Round Should I Draft a Kicker in Fantasy Football? Strategy and Rankings

If you're new to fantasy football and your draft is coming up, you're probably wondering what to expect. Plenty of your questions will revolve around best draft strategies and specific strategy for your draft position, but some of the questions will be even more basic.

When you're planning for your fantasy football draft, and especially once that draft timer is live, you'll have to think a lot about roster construction.

Kicker is one of the most unique positions in fantasy football. It often gets entirely overlooked, which certainly isn't the right approach, but it's also important not to overvalue your kicker. The Duel is here to help with all the best strategy around drafting a kicker in fantasy football.

What Round Should I Draft a Kicker in Fantasy Football

In any league with default or somewhat default scoring settings, whether it's standard or PPR, one- or two-QB, 10-team or 12-team, you want to draft your kicker in the very last round — if you draft one at all.

Fantasy Football Kicker Strategy

There are two strategies to consider for drafting a kicker:

• Draft one in the final round
• Don't draft a kicker at all

The real deciding factor in which you should choose comes down to a couple factors, but the important ones are when your draft is and what your league rules are.

Some leagues force you to fill each roster spot — so you will have to take a kicker whether you like it or not. If you are allowed to leave your draft with a hole in your starting lineup, the date of your draft will decide whether you'll want to draft a kicker.

Not Drafting a Kicker

If you're drafting before the preseason is over, which means there's still time for key players to get injured, then you should skip the kicker selection. That roster spot is much better served by hanging onto a handcuff running back (even a handcuff for a star you didn't draft) who could suddenly be incredibly valuable if the star gets hurt.

If nobody gets hurt by the time Week 1 rolls around, you can then simply drop that handcuff for a waiver wire kicker at that point. The kicker you get off waivers won't be appreciably worse than one you would have selected anyway.

Choosing a Kicker

If you are drafting a kicker, there are a few factors to look out for. The easiest move is to just draft the highest-ranked kicker on the board. You can click here to view The Duel's fantasy football kicker rankings for 2022. But unless you pick right at the start of the round and a top-five option is available for you, that isn't actually the best way to go.

If you're not landing a top-five kicker, then you just want to draft whichever kicker has the best matchup for Week 1. That means a team whose offenses is expected to score a ton of points — giving opportunities for field goals and extra points.

The reason to ignore rankings with this selection is that without a top-tier kicker you should be streaming the position anyway — starting whichever available waiver wire option has the best matchup for the week.

And if you're doing more prep for your draft, be sure to check out some of The Duel's other fantasy football resources too:

• Fantasy Football Rankings
• 10 Best Fantasy Football Sleepers to Win Your League
• 60 Best Fantasy Football Team Names
• Best Draft Position for Fantasy Football

New users earn an instant FREE entry when you sign up for FanDuel DFS! Sign Up Now!

Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.