NFL

The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 3

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.

Here are Week 3's results:

PlayerPositionPassing
NEP
Rushing
NEP
Reception
NEP
Rating
Keenan AllenWR-0.1018.20100
Mike EvansWR17.70100
Mark IngramRB10.121.0999
Russell WilsonQB21.636.9099
Phillip LindsayRB5.813.0998
Tony PollardRB6.881.2797
Matt RyanQB22.74-0.1097
Julio JonesWR13.2896
Dalvin CookRB5.272.5996
Darren WallerTE0.5812.4196
Tyler LockettWR12.9296
Cooper KuppWR12.0893
Alvin KamaraRB-0.567.0692
LeSean McCoyRB2.773.5791
Sterling ShepardWR0.8410.7291
Ezekiel ElliottRB5.390.9491
Deshaun WatsonQB22.20-3.9491
Patrick MahomesQB19.99-1.6790
Jacoby BrissettQB16.851.3790
Ronald JonesRB2.423.1688


- The two 100s on the scale this week came from wide receivers. Of course, Mike Evans stole headlines with three first-half touchdowns, but Keenan Allen was just as impactful on Sunday. Evans totaled 190 yards and 3 touchdowns on 15 targets against an overmatched New York Giants defense, but it wasn't enough for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to pull out a home win, as a missed field goal at the buzzer led to a loss for Evans and Tampa Bay. For Allen and the Los Angeles Chargers, they also lost at home (27-20 to the Houston Texans). Allen recorded 18.20 Reception NEP, turning 17 targets in to 13 catches, 183 yards, and 2 touchdowns.

- Mark Ingram handled 16 carries for the Baltimore Ravens in a road loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, but Ingram churned out 3 touchdowns and 103 yards, good for a 68.8% Rushing Success Rate and 10.12 Rushing NEP. That's the highest total of the season, and only five running backs accounted for a higher single-game Rushing NEP in the entire 2018 season.

- A fourth straight losing effort on the list, Russell Wilson did what he could for the Seattle Seahawks, throwing 50 times for 406 yards and 2 touchdowns and rushing 7 times for 51 yards and 2 touchdowns.

- Phillip Lindsay's Denver Broncos lost in Week 5, meaning all five of the top performers lost, so we had some strong efforts go for naught. Lindsay handled 21 carries for 81 yards and 2 touchdowns while adding 49 yards on 5 targets.