Unless you had Anders Carlson or Riley Patterson on your fantasy football roster, you may want to consider Arizona Cardinals kicker Matt Prater as a potential sleeper starter for Week 4. While Prater ranks between 25th and 32nd per FantasyPros, it doesn’t mean he won’t overachieve once more this week.
Rankings aside, Prater has so far been off to a remarkable start to the 2023 season, converting 32 fantasy points per Pro-Football-Reference. In Weeks 1 and 3, Prater also hit 12.00 fantasy points against what were supposed to be a pair of the league’s toughest defenses.
Therefore, Prater isn’t one to underestimate this week, even if he and the Cardinals offense are still major underdogs. Ironically, Prater could have had even more points this past week, but if you remember it right, the Cards tried for a pair of two-point conversions, which negated two points from the longtime kicker.
Arizona Cardinals kicker would make a great sleeper starter this week
You won’t see many pundits around the NFL singing Prater’s praises, despite the improvement we have seen from the Cardinals offense that should give the kicker plenty of chances on Sunday. But recent history is on the Cardinals (and Prater’s) side.
The only caveat is the 49ers defense, itself, which has allowed just 42 points all season, or exactly 14.0 points per game. However, the Cardinals are also coming off of a 28-point outing vs. a team that allowed just 10 in two games last week, so there is even a counter-argument to be made here.
This leaves the final argument to nothing more than speculation, and it states that the Arizona Cardinals won’t pull off the same magic against San Francisco. With more film on the Cards, that’s probably an unfortunate truth, but it still doesn’t account for what Drew Petzing has in his bag of tricks this week. And if Petzing can keep things original, then Prater will get his chances.
(Statistics provided by Pro-Football-Reference)