The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 6
Week 6 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 6.
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 6's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Antonio Brown | WR | 93 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 92 |
| Cameron Brate | TE | 90 |
| Marvin Jones | WR | 89 |
| Melvin Gordon | RB | 86 |
| Jarvis Landry | WR | 85 |
| Alvin Kamara | RB | 85 |
| Marqise Lee | WR | 85 |
| Le'Veon Bell | RB | 83 |
| Evan Engram | TE | 82 |
| Tom Brady | QB | 82 |
| Kareem Hunt | RB | 81 |
| Mike Evans | WR | 80 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | QB | 79 |
| Rob Gronkowski | TE | 78 |
| Chris Thompson | RB | 73 |
| Robby Anderson | WR | 72 |
| Davante Adams | WR | 72 |
| Golden Tate | WR | 72 |
| Brandin Cooks | WR | 72 |
- Antonio Brown paced the league with 155 receiving yards on 10 targets in Week 6 against the Kansas City Chiefs. Brown scored once and added 11.90 Reception NEP, most of any player as well.
- Kirk Cousins accounted for all three of Washington's touchdowns, throwing for two and rushing for one, against the San Francisco 49ers. Cousins led the position with 15.78 Passing NEP in a mostly down week for offensive performance. He also added 2.97 points on the ground, third among all quarterbacks in Week 6.
- Cameron Brate, Mike Evans, and Ryan Fitzpatrick all made the top 20 this week, though Brate had the best day of all, by our numbers. Brate turned his 8 targets into 6 catches, 76 yards, and a touchdown, for 11.21 Reception NEP. Evans hauled in just 3 of his 8 targets but had 95 yards and a touchdown to show for it (plus 9.49 expected points added to Tampa Bay's output). On 32 attempts in the absence of Jameis Winston, Fitzpatrick compiled 290 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 2 picks (12.54 Passing NEP, third among all quarterbacks in Week 6).
- Marvin Jones had his best game of the year, with 96 yards and a score (11.10 Reception NEP) on 14 targets against the New Orleans Saints.
- Melvin Gordon, one of last week's top players, had another great outing: 25 carries, 83 yards, and a rushing touchdown, plus 9 catches, 12, targets, 67 receiving yards, and a touchdown.
