The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 9
Week 9 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.
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 9's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Mark Ingram | RB | 100 |
| Mike Evans | WR | 100 |
| Melvin Gordon | RB | 99 |
| Dak Prescott | QB | 97 |
| Latavius Murray | RB | 96 |
| Jason Witten | TE | 95 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 94 |
| Ezekiel Elliott | RB | 92 |
| Matt Ryan | QB | 92 |
| Jay Ajayi | RB | 88 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 84 |
| Jameis Winston | QB | 82 |
| Julio Jones | WR | 82 |
| Antonio Brown | WR | 80 |
| Antonio Gates | TE | 80 |
| Matt Forte | RB | 80 |
| Aaron Rodgers | QB | 79 |
| Mike Wallace | WR | 78 |
| Sam Bradford | QB | 76 |
| Allen Robinson | WR | 75 |
- Last week, Mark Ingram played only six snaps for the New Orleans Saints (8% of their plays), but in Week 9, it didn't matter. He played 33 snaps -- still a worrisome 38% share -- but got a carry on 46% of them. He mustered 158 rushing yards on those 15 attempts, good for a Rushing NEP of 10.14. No other player topped 6.78, and only three added more than 3.67 points on the ground so far in Week 9.
- Similarly, Mike Evans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers dominated his competition. He posted 17.91 Reception NEP on Thursday Night Football, thanks to 150 yards and 2 touchdowns. Only Jason Witten's 12.47 Reception NEP was in double-digits in Week 9's games so far.
- Few other performances really stacked up to Ingram and Evans, but Melvin Gordon wasn't far behind. Gordon added 6.31 points of expected scoring on the ground, fourth-best of the week, and 4.21 points through the air, second-best among running backs.
- As for quarterbacks, Dak Prescott (21.12 Passing NEP) went 21 of 27 for 247 yards and 3 touchdowns. That mark topped Drew Brees' 21.02 and Matt Ryan' 19.7. Only Philip Rivers (15.01) and Jameis Winston (14.82) topped 11.29 Passing NEP so far in Week 9.
