The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 5
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 5's results:
Player | Position | Passing NEP | Rushing NEP | Reception NEP | Rating |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Will Fuller | WR | — | — | 20.26 | 100 |
Deshaun Watson | QB | 36.68 | 3.83 | — | 100 |
Aaron Jones | RB | — | 9.26 | 5.33 | 100 |
Christian McCaffrey | RB | -1.47 | 6.90 | 7.64 | 100 |
Amari Cooper | WR | — | — | 17.50 | 100 |
D.J. Chark | WR | — | — | 16.46 | 100 |
Chris Godwin | WR | — | — | 16.17 | 99 |
Adam Thielen | WR | — | — | 15.57 | 99 |
Michael Thomas | WR | — | — | 14.96 | 99 |
Kyler Murray | QB | 9.75 | 8.08 | — | 92 |
Phillip Lindsay | RB | — | 4.85 | 1.49 | 92 |
Josh Jacobs | RB | — | 4.60 | 1.70 | 91 |
Kirk Cousins | QB | 18.96 | -0.78 | — | 91 |
Russell Wilson | QB | 17.24 | 1.25 | — | 91 |
David Johnson | RB | — | 1.47 | 4.66 | 91 |
Dalvin Cook | RB | — | -1.23 | 7.09 | 90 |
Cooper Kupp | WR | — | — | 10.85 | 88 |
Sony Michel | RB | — | 3.47 | 2.05 | 88 |
Chase Edmonds | RB | — | 4.45 | 1.06 | 88 |
Alvin Kamara | RB | 1.23 | 1.59 | 2.68 | 88 |
- Will Fuller dominated in Week 5, hauling in 14 of 16 targets for 217 yards and 3 touchdowns. His 20.26 Reception NEP are a season-high. Only Amari Cooper's Week 14 (23.43 Reception NEP) has been better since the start of 2018. Deshaun Watson also posted a perfect 100 this week after going 28 of 33 for 426 yards and 5 touchdowns. Watson also added 47 rushing yards on 4 carries. His 36.68 Passing NEP are the most in a single game since the start of the 2018 season.
- Aaron Jones totaled 182 yards and 4 touchdowns on 26 touches in a road win over the Dallas Cowboys. Christian McCaffrey generated 237 yards on 25 touches and scored 3 times. Each back added at least 13.0 NEP to their teams' outcomes in Week 5.
- Two more receivers posted 100 ratings: Amari Cooper (11 catches, 226 yards, 1 touchdown) and D.J. Chark (8 catches, 164 yards, and 2 touchdowns). In a week that put the spotlight on the Houston Texans, Cooper and Chark's huge games got overshadowed.