The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 12
Week 12 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 12.
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 12's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Mark Ingram | RB | 100 |
| David Johnson | RB | 100 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 99 |
| Emmanuel Sanders | WR | 98 |
| Le'Veon Bell | RB | 97 |
| Trevor Siemian | QB | 96 |
| Marquess Wilson | WR | 96 |
| Mike Evans | WR | 96 |
| Jordan Reed | TE | 92 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 92 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | QB | 91 |
| Antonio Brown | WR | 91 |
| Colin Kaepernick | QB | 91 |
| Odell Beckham | WR | 91 |
| Marcus Mariota | QB | 90 |
| Ted Ginn Jr. | WR | 90 |
| Michael Thomas | WR | 90 |
| Ryan Tannehill | QB | 89 |
| Dak Prescott | QB | 88 |
| Michael Crabtree | WR | 88 |
- Only two players this week turned in perfect 100s: Mark Ingram and David Johnson. Ingram did the majority of his work on the ground (14 carries, 146 yards, 1 touchdown), boasting a Rushing NEP of 8.37, tops among all running backs in Week 12. However, he still notched 4.45 Reception NEP on just 1 catch, a 21-yard touchdown.
- As for Johnson, he actually lost his Arizona Cardinals points on the ground. His 13 carries for 58 yards yielded a -0.68 Rushing NEP. However, he hauled in 8 of 11 targets for 103 yards and a score, good for 12.93 Reception NEP, fourth-highest among all players this week.
- Fellow stud running back Le'Veon Bell earned 7.70 Rushing NEP on 23 carries (120 yards and a touchdown) on Thanksgiving.
- Also on Thanksgiving, Kirk Cousins threw 53 times and completed 41 of them for 449 yards and 3 touchdowns, torching the Dallas Cowboys for 26.54 Passing NEP. Only Trevor Siemian (18.90) and Ben Roethlisberger (17.52) topped 15.00 on the week so far. Cousins really was the most impressive passer of the week by a large margin.
- As for the receivers, Emmanuel Sanders won the week with 7 catches on 10 targets for 162 yards and a score (14.60 Reception NEP). Marquess Wilson caught 8 of 11 targets for 125 yards and a score (13.15 Reception NEP). And with a performance rating of 96, Mike Evans rode his pair of first-quarter touchdowns and a final stat line of 8 catches, 11 targets, 104 yards, and 2 scores to a Reception NEP of 12.98.
