NFL

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:

PlayerPositionRating
Rod SmithRB100
Alex CollinsRB99
Antonio BrownWR99
Todd GurleyRB99
Le'Veon BellRB98
Jonathan StewartRB96
Jordan HowardRB95
Ben RoethlisbergerQB95
Giovani BernardRB93
Jamaal WilliamsRB92
Cooper KuppWR92
Wayne GallmanRB90
Demaryius ThomasWR90
DeAndre HopkinsWR90
Javorius AllenRB90
Carson WentzQB89
Michael ThomasWR89
Dak PrescottQB88
Philip RiversQB87
Tyrell WilliamsWR86


- In a week full of stellar running back performances, Rod Smith had the best week of all, per our algorithm. Smith tallied 160 total yards and 2 touchdowns on just 11 touches. His 113 receiving yards on 5 targets netted him 9.95 Reception NEP, the third-most in a game by a running back this season.

- Alex Collins handled 20 touches for 166 yards (18 carries for 120 on the ground). That racked up 7.89 Rushing NEP for the Baltimore Ravens' early-down back in a last-minute loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

- Opposite Collins, Antonio Brown made a huge impact on that 39-38 game. Brown's 18 targets resulted in 11 targets and 213 yards. He didn't score, but he added 15.44 expected points to Pittsburgh's total. Le'Veon Bell saw just 13 carries for 48 yards but scored twice on the ground (for 2.86 Rushing NEP) and added 77 yards and a touchdown on 10 targets through the air (6.38 Reception NEP).

- Todd Gurley had himself a day, as well, and did so on limited touches. Gurley found the end zone twice on 13 carries with 96 yards on top of it (7.07 Rushing NEP) and had 3 catches for 39 yards (3.01 Reception NEP).