The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 7
Week 7 games aren't over yet, so maybe the title of this article is a little misleading. It should read something like The 20 Best Offensive Players From the Thursday and Sunday Games in Week 7.
That just doesn't flow all that well.
As you know, we like math here at numberFire. Our algorithms help tell a better story about sports -- they're able to dig through the nonsense, helping us look at things that matter on the court, field or rink.
With football, we love our Net Expected Points (NEP) metric, which measures the number of points a player adds (or loses) to his team versus what he's expected to add. Rather than counting statistics like yards, touchdowns and receptions, NEP looks at down-and-distance situations and field position and relates these instances to history. When a player outperforms what's happened in the past, he sees a positive expected points value on the play. When he doesn't, his expected points gained on the play is negative. All of these little instances add up, then, to be a player's Net Expected Points total.
You can read more about NEP in our glossary.
Using a formula that compares individual single-game performance to history, the numberFire Live platform takes this Net Expected Points formula and assigns a rating to a player's performance. Each week, that's what we'll show here -- the 20 best ratings from the Thursday and Sunday games.
Here are Week 7's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Hill | RB | 100 |
| Jay Ajayi | RB | 99 |
| Julio Jones | WR | 98 |
| Mike Evans | WR | 97 |
| A.J. Green | WR | 97 |
| Melvin Gordon | RB | 96 |
| Davante Adams | WR | 95 |
| Tyrell Williams | WR | 94 |
| Michael Crabtree | WR | 90 |
| Le'Veon Bell | RB | 90 |
| Andrew Luck | QB | 89 |
| T.Y. Hilton | WR | 88 |
| Kenny Stills | WR | 88 |
| Randall Cobb | WR | 87 |
| Jameis Winston | QB | 86 |
| Rob Gronkowski | TE | 85 |
| Matthew Stafford | QB | 85 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 85 |
| Tevin Coleman | RB | 85 |
| Andy Dalton | QB | 84 |
- Jeremy Hill broke out in Week 7 against the Cleveland Browns. Hill dominated in terms of Rushing NEP, adding 12.74 points above expectation on the ground in Week 7. Jay Ajayi (11.17), who ranked second on the week, was the only other running back to top 4.53 Rushing NEP in Week 7. Ajayi ran for 200-plus yards for the second straight week.
- Julio Jones, A.J. Green, and Mike Evans all played up to their potential in Week 7. Jones netted a Reception NEP of 14.52, tops of the weekend. Evans' 13.69 bested Green's 13.40. Three lesser-heralded wideouts, though, weren't too far behind. Davante Adams added 12.56 points above expectation, Tyrell Williams posted a Reception NEP of 12.35, and Michael Crabtree rounded out the top six with a mark of 11.25.
- Andrew Luck actually posted a marginally smaller Passing NEP (15.86) than Drew Brees (15.88), but Luck proved to be the more valuable player in his own game than Brees was in his. The Indianapolis Colts earned a much-needed win over a division rival with a 34-26 victory over the Tennessee Titans. Brees' New Orleans Saints fell 27-21 on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs.
