If you’re looking for a sleeper kicker, I think the list starts and ends with Jonathan Garibay. If he sticks with the Cowboys, he’s got a chance for top-5 production at the position.
With kickers, I tend to look more at the team and the situation rather than the position. It doesn’t matter so much whether the guy hits 82 percent or 88 percent. It’s how often he’s getting out on the field that’s important.
As it stands, Garibay (a rookie free agent from Texas Tech) is the only kicker on the Dallas roster. And his college numbers indicate he’s got a good chance of being their guy. He hit 15 of his 16 attempts last year, with the only miss a 53-yarder that would have tied the Baylor game at the end. He went 49 of 50 on extra points.
Garibay was not as good as a junior. In three games (the first three games of his college career) he went 6 of 7 on extra points and 8 of 11 on field goals.
He’s a big guy. Listed at the Dallas website at 5-foot-11 and 217 pounds.
Anywho, let’s assume for now that Garibay makes enough kicks at camp and in the preseason games that the Cowboys are comfortable with him as their kicker for 2022. At that point, I think it’s fair to start wondering whether he should be one of the first 10 kickers selected in a fantasy draft. That’s a powerful offense, with the kicker tending to get on the field a lot. Over the last three years, Dallas has generated 7 more field goals than every other team.
I like the idea of gambling on Garibay. (Such a gamble, of course, becomes more palatable in a league with waiver moves, with the ability to plug in a decent replacement if things go south.)
If every kicker on every team made every kick, the Cowboys would have averaged 161 kicking points over the last three years – 9 more than any other team.
| POSSIBLE PK POINTS (last 3 yrs) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | FGA | XPA | Points |
| Dallas | 116 | 135 | 483 |
| Tampa Bay | 97 | 164 | 455 |
| Kansas City | 97 | 155 | 446 |
| Indianapolis | 103 | 131 | 440 |
| Arizona | 102 | 130 | 436 |
| Baltimore | 95 | 144 | 429 |
| Las Vegas | 104 | 116 | 428 |
| New England | 101 | 125 | 428 |
| New Orleans | 94 | 145 | 427 |
| San Francisco | 97 | 136 | 427 |
| Atlanta | 109 | 99 | 426 |
| Buffalo | 94 | 142 | 424 |
| LA Rams | 97 | 133 | 424 |
| Cincinnati | 99 | 107 | 404 |
| LA Chargers | 94 | 121 | 403 |
| Miami | 100 | 101 | 401 |
| Minnesota | 89 | 127 | 394 |
| Denver | 100 | 90 | 390 |
| Carolina | 97 | 99 | 390 |
| Pittsburgh | 95 | 102 | 387 |
| Tennessee | 78 | 152 | 386 |
| Green Bay | 74 | 155 | 377 |
| Washington | 97 | 83 | 374 |
| Detroit | 89 | 105 | 372 |
| Seattle | 75 | 144 | 369 |
| Chicago | 90 | 94 | 364 |
| Houston | 83 | 114 | 363 |
| Cleveland | 75 | 122 | 347 |
| Philadelphia | 78 | 107 | 341 |
| Jacksonville | 86 | 70 | 328 |
| NY Jets | 83 | 78 | 327 |
| NY Giants | 82 | 79 | 325 |
—Ian Allan