Week 16'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 16.
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 16's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Antonio Brown | WR | 100 |
| Nick Foles | QB | 99 |
| Zach Ertz | TE | 99 |
| Alvin Kamara | RB | 99 |
| C.J. Anderson | RB | 98 |
| Aaron Rodgers | QB | 97 |
| Doug Baldwin | WR | 96 |
| Darren Sproles | RB | 96 |
| Sam Darnold | QB | 94 |
| Jamaal Williams | RB | 92 |
| Robby Anderson | WR | 92 |
| Andrew Luck | QB | 91 |
| Sony Michel | RB | 91 |
| Eli Manning | QB | 90 |
| Evan Engram | TE | 89 |
| Russell Wilson | QB | 89 |
| Deshaun Watson | QB | 89 |
| Baker Mayfield | QB | 89 |
| T.Y. Hilton | WR | 88 |
| Kyle Rudolph | TE | 88 |
- Antonio Brown reeled in 14 catches on a whopping 19 targets for 185 yards and 2 touchdowns, earning his Pittsburgh Steelers 18.73 expected points on the scoreboard and himself a perfect 100 rating by the numberFire Live grading system. Brown's Steelers lost a costly game on Sunday, but Brown's huge game was still Week 16's best.
- Nick Foles and Zach Ertz hooked up for two top-three performances of their own in the Philadelphia Eagles' win over the Houston Texans. Foles completed 35 of 49 attempts for 471 yards and 4 touchdowns (with an interception), culminating in 25.42 Passing NEP for his offense. Ertz hauled in 12 of his 16 targets for 110 yards and 2 touchdowns (15.24 Reception NEP). In the process, Ertz broke Jason Witten's single-season tight end reception record, as well.
- Alvin Kamara showed his dual-threat abilities in Week 16, rushing 7 times for 23 yards but 2 touchdowns (3.47 Rushing NEP) and catching 4 of 6 targets for 82 yards (6.70 Reception NEP). His New Orleans Saints clinched a first-round bye with the win.
- C.J. Anderson stepped in for Todd Gurley and ran 20 times for 167 yards and a touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals in a 31-9 win for the Los Angeles Rams. Anderson generated 9.89 Rushing NEP (0.49 per carry) with an 80.0% Rushing Success Rate, smashing league averages (0.03 and 41.5%, respectively) in the process.