The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 9
Week 9's 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.
But that's not really a concise headline.
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 value 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Thomas | WR | 100 |
| Kareem Hunt | RB | 99 |
| Tevin Coleman | RB | 99 |
| Alvin Kamara | RB | 98 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 98 |
| Christian McCaffrey | RB | 98 |
| Patrick Mahomes | QB | 97 |
| James White | RB | 96 |
| Matt Ryan | QB | 94 |
| James Conner | RB | 94 |
| Maurice Harris | WR | 93 |
| Nick Mullens | QB | 91 |
| Josh Gordon | WR | 90 |
| Adam Humphries | WR | 90 |
| Keenan Allen | WR | 90 |
| Jared Goff | QB | 89 |
| JuJu Smith-Schuster | WR | 88 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | QB | 87 |
| Travis Kelce | TE | 86 |
| George Kittle | TE | 86 |
- Michael Thomas generated the only perfect 100 so far in Week 9, thanks to his big receiving day against the Los Angeles Rams. Thomas pulled in 12 of his 15 targets for 211 yards and one touchdown. In all, he generated 17.71 Reception NEP, the second-highest single-game mark of the entire season (behind Calvin Ridley's 18.14 in Week 3).
- Kareem Hunt paced all backs with 4.82 Rushing NEP (17 carries, 91 yards, 2 touchdowns) and added 5.25 Reception NEP on just 2 targets (1 catch for a 50-yard touchdown). Hunt has been a staple at the top of the leaderboard for much of the season and has actually played his two highest snap rates of the year over the past two weeks.
- Tevin Coleman racked up 68 yards on 7 targets (7.20 Reception NEP) in the Atlanta Falcons' road win over Washington. Coleman also poured in 88 rushing yards on his 13 carries (2.76 Rushing NEP).
- Alvin Kamara scored twice on the ground to go along with 82 yards on his 19 carries, production that generated 4.35 expected points on the ground. Kamara did more damage through the air on his 5 targets: 4 catches, 34 yards, 1 touchdown, and 5.14 Reception NEP. The New Orleans Saints' offense clicked on all cylinders in Week 9.
- Drew Brees got in on the top-five action, too, by way of 4 touchdowns and 346 yards against the Rams. Brees led the week with 24.18 points over expectation on 36 drop backs (no interceptions or sacks), a single-game total ranking eighth on the full season.
