Week 13'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 13.
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 13's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Tarik Cohen | RB | 99 |
| Antonio Brown | WR | 99 |
| Todd Gurley | RB | 98 |
| Christian McCaffrey | RB | 97 |
| Travis Kelce | TE | 97 |
| Keenan Allen | WR | 96 |
| Phillip Lindsay | RB | 95 |
| Dante Pettis | WR | 94 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 91 |
| Davante Adams | WR | 90 |
| Justin Jackson | RB | 89 |
| Tom Brady | QB | 89 |
| Jalen Richard | RB | 89 |
| Chris Godwin | WR | 88 |
| Derek Carr | QB | 88 |
| James White | RB | 86 |
| Patrick Mahomes | QB | 85 |
| Rashaad Penny | RB | 85 |
| Odell Beckham | WR | 85 |
| Joe Mixon | RB | 85 |
- Tarik Cohen threw for a one-yard touchdown pass, but his big contribution was through the air: 12 catches on 14 targets for 156 yards. Cohen added 9.04 Reception NEP with those opportunities and had 102 air yards, the most air yards in a game by a running back since at least 2012, according to FantasyADHD.com.
- Antonio Brown hauled in 10 of 13 targets for 154 yards and a touchdown on Sunday Night Football in a narrow loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. Brown leads the week with 14.75 Reception NEP entering Monday Night Football.
- Todd Gurley bounced back from his first down game in Week 11 with 26 total touches for 165 yards and 2 touchdowns. Gurley added 2.36 Reception NEP on his 3 carries and 6.59 Rushing NEP, despite a below-average Rushing Success Rate against the Detroit Lions. The Los Angeles Rams' win clinched the NFC West.
- Christian McCaffrey continues to be a dominant factor. Although he ran just 10 times, he totaled 106 yards on those, good for 4.88 Rushing NEP. He also had 10 targets, of which he caught 9, for 55 yards and a touchdown (3.83 Reception NEP). Despite the big game, the Carolina Panthers lost a vital game to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
- Travis Kelce demolished the Oakland Raiders. Kelce caught 12 of 13 targets for 168 yards and 2 touchdowns (13.51 Reception NEP). Kelce has finished as the top-scoring tight end in FanDuel formats in four of the past five weeks.