The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 4
Week 4 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 4.
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 4's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Ezekiel Elliott | RB | 100 |
| Alvin Kamara | RB | 100 |
| DeAndre Hopkins | WR | 100 |
| Mitchell Trubisky | QB | 100 |
| Jared Goff | QB | 99 |
| Julio Jones | WR | 99 |
| Tarik Cohen | RB | 98 |
| Matt Ryan | QB | 98 |
| Tyler Boyd | WR | 98 |
| Golden Tate | WR | 98 |
| Cooper Kupp | WR | 96 |
| Melvin Gordon | RB | 96 |
| Adam Thielen | WR | 96 |
| Andy Dalton | QB | 96 |
| Corey Davis | WR | 95 |
| Todd Gurley | RB | 95 |
| James White | RB | 95 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 95 |
| George Kittle | TE | 94 |
| Deshaun Watson | QB | 93 |
- Ezekiel Elliott handled a big workload in Week 4 (25 carries for 152 yards and 4 catches for 88 yards and a touchdown), en route to a perfect rating of 100. His 88 receiving yards were 7 shy from a personal best, and his 30 air yards were a career high, via FantasyADHD. Elliott added 8.31 expected points on the ground and 8.84 through the air.
- Alvin Kamara ran 19 times for 134 yards and 3 touchdowns and also added 47 receiving yards on 5 catches. Kamara totaled 3.65 Reception NEP and a week-best 9.57 Rushing NEP in a win over the New York Giants.
- DeAndre Hopkins turned his 12 targets into 10 catches, 169 yards, 1 touchdown, and 17.04 Reception NEP. Nuk accounted for 182 air yards, third-most of the week.
- Mitchell Trubisky was just one of four passers to top 20.0 Passing Net Expected Points. He generated 27.95 Passing NEP, second behind only Jared Goff's 28.67. Trubisky threw 26 times for 6 touchdowns and 354 yards. Trubisky also ran 3 times for 53 yards, adding 4.76 expected points on the ground against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a blowout win.
- Goff's performance on Thursday definitely deserves its own attention: 26 of 33 for 465 yards and 5 touchdowns. Goff has already accounted for 73.68 Passing NEP, 0.53 per drop back and not too far off of his 2017 total (104.11). In 2016, Goff lost 65.71 expected points on his 231 drop backs (-0.28 per drop back). His 2018 performance has been a 0.81-point-per-drop back increase from his rookie season.
