The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 14
Week 14 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 14.
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 14's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Russell Wilson | QB | 99 |
| Doug Baldwin | WR | 98 |
| James Starks | RB | 98 |
| Todd Gurley | RB | 97 |
| Tyler Lockett | WR | 96 |
| AJ Green | WR | 95 |
| Isaiah Crowell | RB | 94 |
| Ted Ginn Jr. | WR | 93 |
| Jordan Reed | TE | 93 |
| Bilal Powell | RB | 93 |
| Eddie Lacy | RB | 93 |
| Cam Newton | QB | 93 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 92 |
| Brandon Marshall | WR | 88 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | QB | 88 |
| David Johnson | RB | 88 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 88 |
| Carson Palmer | QB | 87 |
| Alshon Jeffery | WR | 85 |
| Michael Floyd | WR | 85 |
- Russell Wilson is on fire -- over the first nine games of 2015, Wilson threw 10 touchdown passes. Over his last four contests, he's thrown 16. It's catapulted him into the top five at the quarterback position in Passing NEP, when he wasn't cracking the top 10 to start the year. If not for Cam Newton, Tom Brady and Carson Palmer, Wilson could be a front-runner to win the MVP.
- And Wilson couldn't be doing this without Doug Baldwin. Baldwin now has eight touchdowns over his last three games -- his career high in the touchdown category entering this year was five.
- Tyler Lockett has had an underrated couple of weeks, seeing 14 targets and catching 13 of them for 194 yards and two scores. Thanks to Wilson's play, both Lockett and Baldwin were the best, most efficient wideouts of the week.
- Isaiah Crowell entered Week 14 with a -17.46 Rushing NEP total, which was fifth worst in the NFL. Only Todd Gurley and James Starks (thanks to his big score) ended Week 14 with a higher NEP total -- Crowell finished with 6.31 Rushing Net Expected Points, making his season look at least reasonable.
