Week 11 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 11.
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 11's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Kenny Stills | WR | 100 |
| Keenan Allen | WR | 99 |
| Antonio Brown | WR | 99 |
| Mark Ingram | RB | 98 |
| LeSean McCoy | RB | 95 |
| Jordan Howard | RB | 93 |
| Tom Brady | QB | 93 |
| D'Onta Foreman | RB | 92 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 92 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 92 |
| Alvin Kamara | RB | 91 |
| Adam Thielen | WR | 88 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | QB | 88 |
| Case Keenum | QB | 87 |
| Rishard Matthews | WR | 86 |
| Matt Moore | QB | 86 |
| Marshawn Lynch | RB | 86 |
| Brandin Cooks | WR | 85 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 83 |
| Corey Clement | RB | 83 |
- Kenny Stills racked up 180 yards on 8 targets (7 catches) and a touchdown. He generated 17.57 Reception NEP, the highest single-game mark of the season. On passes traveling 16-plus yards downfield, Stills had 4 catches on 5 targets for 150 yards and a touchdown.
- Keenan Allen also had a big game: 12 catches on 13 targets, 159 yards, and 2 touchdowns. He added 16.16 Reception NEP on those, the sixth-most in a single game in the 2017 season.
- You're probably wondering why Antonio Brown was the third player listed. After all, he had 3 touchdowns (and 144 yards), but his reception NEP of 15.47 -- while being ninth-most in a single game this season -- ranked third this week alone. That plus the blowout factor limited his in-game impact by the performance rating algorithm.
- Mark Ingram was outsnapped by Alvin Kamara 46 to 28 in a negative game script but still ran for a week high 134 yards on just 11 carries. He added 8.08 Rushing NEP on those.
- LeSean McCoy handled just 13 carries but produced 114 yards and a touchdown. He also caught a 12-yard touchdown catch on his lone target in the route by the Los Angeles Chargers.
- Jordan Howard bounced back this week with 125 yards rushing on 15 carries (6.85 Rushing NEP) against the Detroit Lions in a slim home loss (27-24).