Chase McLaughlin
McLaughlin is Tampa Bay's entrenched full-time placekicker, an accuracy-first fantasy asset whose weekly value is essentially a bet on how often the Bucs' offense stalls inside the 30 rather than scoring touchdowns.
Role
He is Tampa Bay's unchallenged placekicker, handling all field-goal and extra-point duty with no camp competition reported; his workload is dictated purely by how many scoring drives the Baker Mayfield-led offense produces and how many of those end in makeable field-goal range versus the end zone.
Tampa Bay's offense is consistently among the league's more productive units, generating enough drives to keep McLaughlin busy, and he has a strong track record of hitting field goals at an elite clip in prior seasons (93%+ in 2023 and 2024), making him a steady, low-variance floor option.
Kicker value is inherently tied to red-zone efficiency rather than kicker skill, and available data suggests some year-to-year dip in his conversion rate; if the Bucs' offense becomes more explosive and converts more trips into touchdowns rather than field-goal attempts, his opportunity volume shrinks regardless of accuracy.
Where analysts split
Preseason outlooks framed him as a steady top-12 kicker based on career accuracy, but the available season-to-date scoring data is inconsistent enough (varying conversion figures cited across sources) that it's unclear whether his 2025 accuracy has held at his career-best levels or regressed — that's the open question rather than any real debate over his role.
Research confidence: thin. Outlooks are grounded in web search over current reporting and refreshed through the season.
Fantasy Memo reads your league and answers that every Tuesday — and checks again before kickoff.
Connect your league — 14 days free