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Nick Mariano looks at all 2026 fantasy football Week 5 kickers -- streamers, starts, sits, targets, avoids, and waiver wire pickups. Our Week 5 rankings and tiers for all of the NFL kickers.
With four weeks of our beloved 2026 fantasy football season in the rearview mirror, we know that the impulse is to simply ignore kickers altogether as the initial wave of excitement and sweating lineups wears off. However, looking for edges wherever possible is how you win the most over time! And when the bye weeks start hitting, you just know it'll pay to get ahead of the curve before some managers check their lineup on Sunday morning only to realize they need a kicker replacement.
Thanks to our early projections, we've got some streamer candidates to put on your radar for the week ahead. Even if you feel largely content at the ol' K slot, it never hurts to shop around and feel like you're doing right by your roster. As always, football sample sizes can be quite mean, so don't judge yourself by a doinked kick.
We'll walk you through some widely available kickers who should help you towards a win in Week 5, and possibly beyond. Even if you think that judging kickers is largely a luck-driven exercise, let's at least explore the best way to leave the door open for Lady Luck to grace us with her presence, okay? Now, let's get into which kickers are worth streaming and who's ranked where going into Week 5.
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Week 5 Kicker Rankings for Fantasy Football
| Kicker Tier |
Kicker Rank |
Kicker Name |
Team | Opp. |
| 1 | 1 | Brandon Aubrey | DAL | TB |
| 1 | 2 | Spencer Shrader | IND | @PIT |
| 1 | 3 | Evan McPherson | CIN | @MIA |
| 1 | 4 | Ka'imi Fairbairn | HOU | @TEN |
| 2 | 5 | Will Reichard | MIN | @NO |
| 2 | 6 | Tyler Loop | BAL | @ATL |
| 2 | 7 | Cam Little | JAX | PHI |
| 2 | 8 | Jake Bates | DET | @ARI |
| 2 | 9 | Eddy Pineiro | SF | @SEA |
| 3 | 10 | Jason Myers | SEA | SF |
| 3 | 11 | Trey Smack | GB | CHI |
| 3 | 12 | Tyler Bass | BUF | @LAR |
| 3 | 13 | Harrison Mevis | LAR | BUF |
| 3 | 14 | Chad Ryland | ARI | DET |
| 3 | 15 | Matt Gay | LV | @NE |
| 4 | 16 | Daniel Carlson | NO | MIN |
| 4 | 17 | Chris Boswell | PIT | IND |
| 4 | 18 | Cairo Santos | CHI | @GB |
| 4 | 19 | Drew Stevens | WAS | NYG |
| 5 | 20 | Nick Folk | ATL | BAL |
| 5 | 21 | Dominic Zvada | NYG | @WSH |
| 6 | 22 | Chase McLaughlin | TB | @DAL |
| 6 | 23 | Cameron Dicker | LAC | DEN |
| 6 | 24 | Andy Borregales | NE | LV |
| 6 | 25 | Wil Lutz | DEN | @LAC |
| 6 | 26 | Jake Elliott | PHI | @JAX |
| 6 | 27 | Andre Szmyt | CLE | @NYJ |
| 7 | 28 | Jason Sanders | NYJ | CLE |
| 7 | 29 | Joey Slye | TEN | HOU |
| 7 | 30 | Riley Patterson | MIA | CIN |
Kicker Streamers to Target for Week 5
Only players rostered in fewer than 60% of fantasy football leagues are considered streamers. Respect the tiers and don't get bogged down by pure ordinal rank.
Spencer Shrader (IND) vs. Houston Texans
46% Rostered
The Shredder took his talents across the pond, where they greatly appreciate football yielding a player using their foot on the ball. London witnessed Shrader, who is still available in over half of Yahoo leagues, hit field goals from 48, 52, and 44 yards out. Not only is he 11-for-11 on FGs, but he’s 4-for-4 from 50 or deeper.
Spencer Shrader nails the 52-yarder to extend the @Colts lead to 7.
@INDvsWAS on NFL Network
Stream on @NFLPlus https://t.co/B38xdrm3Wt— NFL (@NFL) October 4, 2026
This writer assumes that this article will be the final time that I can legitimately call Shrader a streamer in any capacity. And regulars have ideally already ridden the past couple of weeks and maybe don’t even read this anymore after realizing what they’ve got. Week 5 at Pittsburgh brings a defense tough enough to stall out the Colts (aka Jonathan Taylor).
In this current day and age, especially with the modified kickoff rules, we expect standardized kicker scoring to add a “60+ Yards” bucket rather than simply cutting off at 50 or more. Of course, you should all be playing with decimal K scoring anyway!
Do your part and make sure Shrader is ineligible for inclusion in this column next week!
Trey Smack (GB) vs. Chicago Bears
17% Rostered
Smack and the Pack have struggled to break out offensively, largely due to the ineffectiveness of the offensive line and ground game, with Jayden Reed’s neck injury not helping the cause. Averaging roughly 18 points per game doesn’t instill confidence, yet Smack crushed a 58-yarder that proved the difference over Tampa Bay in Week 4.
We are less worried when it has been a question of opportunity rather than talent over the first month of play. The Packers are about to face the Bears, Cowboys, and Lions, which are three potent offenses that will force Green Bay to get moving. The resulting low floor will have some avoiding for a more reliable median projection, but he’s earned the trust to get chances from 60 out.
Dominic Zvada (NYG) at Washington Commanders
1% Rostered
The Big Blue kicker graduates to the main section after converting all three of his field goals in a 36-24 win over Arizona, including from 50 and 52 yards away. He only needed to make four extra points in Week 1’s victory, going 9-for-9 on FGs since then.
He’s looking more like the Michigan junior who only missed one field goal through the 13-game campaign, sinking all five kicks during the 2024 ReliaQuest Bowl to beat Alabama, rather than the senior who went 17-for-25.
Now that we’ve seen Jameis Winston look more like himself ahead of a promising matchup with Washington, there’s more faith in getting Zvada on the right side of the field, let alone in his being able to connect when called upon.
Chad Ryland (ARI) vs. Detroit Lions
1% Rostered
The Cardinals have lost three straight, with their inconsistency giving us two active kicking games, as well as two “duds.” I’ll put that in quotes because while he only had one field goal attempt in Week 4, it was a 60-yarder with room to spare as the first half came to a close.
Chad Ryland con la pierna para 60 yardas y más 🦵🔝
📺: DAZN https://t.co/XEbTSW0Kdu
— Cardenales de Arizona (@AZCardenales) October 4, 2026
No matter what, the Cards should buy you plenty of XP with Ryland. And if the situation calls for some deep FGs as time expires, then we could push towards the 12-15 range. The expectation is that every drive against Detroit's defense will wind up with a high probability of entering Lion territory.
Matt Gay (LV) at New England Patriots
5% Rostered
Las Vegas will travel for their first brisk outdoor game of the season in Week 5 at Foxborough, but early October shouldn’t be too rough on the legs. The bigger story here is that the 3-1 Raiders have yet to score less than 26 in a game, and Gay just made four FGs (48, 44, 48, and 32) in the tight loss to Kansas City.
He’s been perfect so far on a top-12 offense, which means we’ve got a cheap avenue to success. The Pats haven’t allowed a double-digit kicker output through four games, but that includes five extra points from Cam Little in Week 3, so the small-sample-size demons can still juke the stats.
Daniel Carlson (NO) vs. Minnesota Vikings
3% Rostered
The Saints will make plenty of mistakes along the way, but they’re out to push the pace and live by Mrs. Frizzle’s mantra of taking chances, making mistakes, and getting messy! This could lead to a nasty, yet box-scoring-filling day against Minnesota’s creative defense in Week 5.
Now, Carlson did miss from 52 yards on Monday night, and the floor is certainly lower than most given the matchup and NO's unbalanced offense (who needs a rushing game?). But this could devolve into a FG battle pretty easily unless the Vikes pull it together on offense.
The good news here is that it seems unlikely at this stage of Kyler Murray’s tenure, as he’s thrown just one TD and averaged barely north of 200 passing yards over two full games (okay, he should've had a second TD but T.J. Hockenson did the smart thing and knelt). They remain noncommittal on Justin Jefferson (ankle) playing, which only lowers the ceiling.
So, we’ll get an aggressive offense going against a similar defense, which could mean more drives that grind through MIN territory if Murray can’t often flip the field.
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