The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 4
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 4's results:
| Player | Position | Passing NEP | Rushing NEP | Reception NEP | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Godwin | WR | — | — | 19.99 | 100 |
| Davante Adams | WR | — | — | 14.34 | 98 |
| Jameis Winston | QB | 25.51 | — | — | 98 |
| Jordan Howard | RB | — | 6.40 | 2.52 | 98 |
| Leonard Fournette | RB | — | 8.67 | 0.09 | 98 |
| Robert Woods | WR | — | — | 13.74 | 97 |
| Nick Chubb | RB | — | 7.44 | 0.86 | 97 |
| Austin Ekeler | RB | — | 1.50 | 6.15 | 95 |
| Jarvis Landry | WR | — | — | 12.10 | 93 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 19.28 | -1 | — | 93 |
| Baker Mayfield | QB | 16.94 | 0.98 | — | 91 |
| David Johnson | RB | — | -1 | 6.23 | 89 |
| Aaron Rodgers | QB | 12.08 | 3.24 | — | 88 |
| Austin Hooper | TE | — | — | 10.30 | 85 |
| Patrick Mahomes | QB | 6.14 | 7.76 | — | 85 |
| Chris Carson | RB | — | 2.40 | 2.47 | 85 |
| Duke Johnson | RB | — | 2.88 | 1.88 | 84 |
| Kenny Golladay | WR | — | — | 9.84 | 82 |
| Sterling Shepard | WR | — | 1.19 | 8.59 | 82 |
| Marcus Mariota | QB | 11.78 | 0.45 | — | 81 |
- Chris Godwin put forth the only 100 rating in the system through Sunday's Week 4 games. Godwin tallied nearly 20.0 Reception NEP on 14 targets (172 yards and 2 touchdowns) in an offensive blow-up spot for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His 19.99 Reception NEP were the best in the NFL so far this season. Jameis Winston also finished top-three this week. Winston generated 25.51 Passing NEP (385 yards and 4 touchdowns on 41 attempts).
- Davante Adams went off for 180 yards and 10 catches on 15 targets. He didn't score, but that obviously doesn't mean he didn't add to the Green Bay Packers' expected outcome. His receptions increased Green Bay's expected scoring output by 14.34 points.
- On the winning side of that Thursday Night Football game, Jordan Howard scored three times for the victorious Philadelphia Eagles. Howard handled 18 touches for 115 total yards on top of the touchdowns.
- Leonard Fournette finished top-five despite not scoring. He turned 29 carries into 225 rushing yards and 3 targets into 20 yards. In total, he added 8.76 points to the Jacksonville Jaguars' 26-point Week 4 outing.
