There are some guys, apparently, who are still playing specialty fantasy games and still need to put together lineups. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on it (I’m not going to do the regular full team write-ups, which would take about an hour per team) but let me know a little something together.
I weighed in on the defenses earlier.
Moving onto kickers. All four guys have the necessary talent and have shown ability to hit pressure kicks. I don’t want to get too much into range and accuracy.
Ultimately with kickers, it tends to be more about which teams are winning. Consider, for example, how these guys have scored in wins versus losses in the regular season. All of them scored more points in the games their teams won, and three have they scored a lot more points in such games.
| KICKERS, POINTS & WINS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Player | Wins | Losses |
| Stephen Gostkowski | 11.2 | 5.5 |
| Adam Vinatieri | 9.6 | 6.8 |
| Steven Hauschka | 8.7 | 7.5 |
| Mason Crosby | 8.8 | 5.8 |
So for this week, it’s really about settling on which teams you believe have the best chance of winning. And when you boil it down to that level, it really looks like the Seahawks and Patriots. They’re both at home, and they’re both 7-point favorites. They’re not just favored, but they’re pretty heavily favored.
So for kickers, I’ll go with Gostkowski and Hauschka as my top 2 guys definitely. Not a huge difference between those guys, but Gostkowski scored 22 more points in the regular season.
There’s also not a big difference between the other two guys. I’ll give the edge to Vinatieri because I think Seattle’s defense is better than New England’s. The Patriots allowed 115 kicking points in the regular season, 27 more than Seattle.
So the mini board for kickers looks something like this:
| KICKER RANKINGS | |
|---|---|
| Player | Points |
| Stephen Gostkowski | 9.8 |
| Steven Hauschka | 9.3 |
| Adam Vinatieri | 7.1 |
| Mason Crosby | 6.7 |
—Ian Allan