The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 9
Week 9 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 9.
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 9's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| TY Hilton | WR | 100 |
| Jared Goff | QB | 98 |
| Alvin Kamara | RB | 95 |
| Jared Cook | TE | 94 |
| Dak Prescott | QB | 92 |
| Terrance Williams | WR | 88 |
| Lamar Miller | RB | 88 |
| Carson Wentz | QB | 88 |
| Demaryius Thomas | WR | 87 |
| Matt Forte | RB | 85 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 84 |
| Marqise Lee | WR | 83 |
| Jay Cutler | QB | 82 |
| DeAndre Hopkins | WR | 82 |
| Jeremy Maclin | WR | 82 |
| Blake Bortles | QB | 80 |
| Carlos Hyde | RB | 80 |
| Robert Woods | WR | 79 |
| Alshon Jeffery | WR | 79 |
| Christian McCaffrey | RB | 79 |
- This week, we saw T.Y. Hilton break free for 175 yards and 2 touchdowns against the Houston Texans. Hilton added 16.49 Reception NEP, the fourth-highest single-game mark of the season.
- Jared Goff racked up 24.68 Passing NEP, the seventh-highest single game mark of the season, thanks to 311 yards and 4 touchdowns on his 22 passing attempts. His 1.12 Passing NEP per pass attempt was the highest rate of any quarterback with at least 20 attempts this season (Goff is also second on this list with a per-attempt Passing NEP of 0.81 back in Week 3).
- Alvin Kamara scored twice, once rushing and once receiving, and totaled 16 touches and totaled 152 yards in yet another win for the New Orleans Saints.
- Jared Cook, with 12.42 Reception NEP, was just one expected point away from the best tight end performance of the season. Cook, despite not scoring, racked up 126 yards on 9 targets in Oakland's Sunday Night Football win against the Miami Dolphins.
- Dak Prescott connected with Terrance Williams on all 9 attempts for 141 yards and 10.81 Reception NEP. As for Prescott, he tallied 12.10 Passing NEP on 33 attempts (249 yards and 2 touchdowns). Prescott also ran 3 times for 27 yards and a score, adding 6.78 expected points in the process.
