Week 10 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 10.
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 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 10's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Matt Jones | RB | 100 |
| Adrian Peterson | RB | 98 |
| Jeremy Langford | RB | 97 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 96 |
| Michael Floyd | WR | 96 |
| Andre Ellington | RB | 95 |
| Charcandrick West | RB | 94 |
| Antonio Brown | WR | 93 |
| Chris Thompson | RB | 91 |
| LeSean McCoy | RB | 89 |
| Mike Evans | WR | 87 |
| Cam Newton | QB | 84 |
| Dwayne Harris | WR | 83 |
| Brent Celek | TE | 83 |
| Doug Baldwin | WR | 82 |
| Zach Miller | TE | 82 |
| Todd Gurley | RB | 81 |
| Jay Cutler | QB | 81 |
| Martavis Bryant | WR | 81 |
| Demaryius Thomas | WR | 80 |
- To be clear, Matt Jones' rating here is skewed a bit by his 78-yard receiving score, which added 6.90 points versus expectation for Washington. And because NEP will favor receiving over rushing -- since it's more efficient -- it makes sense that a running back with three receptions on three targets for 131 yards and a score makes the list.
- Adrian Peterson wouldn't have ranked second this week had he not hit that 80-yard touchdown at the end of the game against Oakland, as that play alone added 6.60 NEP. Take that away, and we're looking at a good -- not great -- 2.40 Rushing NEP performance from the Viking.
- Jeremy Langford wasn't as efficient as Jones because he touched the ball more, but when you consider the matchup (St. Louis entered the week with the top overall defense according to our schedule-adjusted metrics), you could easily make the argument that he was the best running back of the day.
- You like that? Kirk Cousins ended up producing more for his team than any other passer yesterday, but it should be noted that the Saints have been the worst secondary in the NFL according to our numbers. And, actually, they'll be pacing towards historically bad after this week -- they're making a run at being the worst secondary our database has ever seen.