The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 7
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 7's results:
| Player | Position | Passing NEP | Rushing NEP | Reception NEP | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Rodgers | QB | 33.72 | 1.48 | — | 100 |
| Marvin Jones | WR | — | — | 13.82 | 97 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 26.39 | — | — | 97 |
| Dalvin Cook | RB | — | 7.22 | 0.66 | 96 |
| Darren Waller | TE | — | — | 12.70 | 95 |
| Stefon Diggs | WR | — | — | 12.26 | 94 |
| Matthew Stafford | QB | 17.72 | — | — | 92 |
| Allen Robinson | WR | — | — | 11.60 | 92 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 17.05 | — | — | 91 |
| Marquez Valdes-Scantling | WR | — | — | 10.83 | 88 |
| Chase Edmonds | RB | — | 3.59 | 1.74 | 87 |
| Latavius Murray | RB | — | 3.32 | 1.86 | 86 |
| Jared Goff | QB | 12.89 | 1.51 | — | 86 |
| Jacoby Brissett | QB | 20.07 | -4.88 | — | 85 |
| Golden Tate | WR | — | — | 10.07 | 84 |
| Dak Prescott | QB | 11.10 | 2.14 | — | 83 |
| Dede Westbrook | WR | — | 0.64 | 9.20 | 82 |
| Zach Pascal | WR | -0.69 | — | 10.37 | 81 |
| Derek Carr | QB | 18.81 | -5.92 | — | 81 |
| Teddy Bridgewater | QB | 11.26 | 2.10 | — | 81 |
- Aaron Rodgers's 33.72 Passing NEP mark is the second-best single-game performance this season, trailing only Deshaun Watson's 36.68 in Week 5. Rodgers was 25 of 31 for 429 yards and 5 touchdowns, taking just one sack against the Oakland Raiders.
- Five of the seven best performers this week came from a shootout between the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings. Marvin Jones scored 4 touchdowns on 13 targets. That equated to 13.82 Reception NEP. Matthew Stafford was the seventh-best performer this week, throwing for 364 yards and 4 touchdowns (17.72 Passing NEP).
- Kirk Cousins, Dalvin Cook, and Stefon Diggs were all top-six in our ratings. Cousins ranked second in Passing NEP (26.39) and now has 20-plus Passing NEP in consecutive weeks. He is now one of four passers with multiple games of at least 20 Passing NEP (Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, and Matt Ryan). Cook tallied his fifth 100-yard rushing game, running 25 times for 142 yards and 2 touchdowns this week. Diggs didn't score but now has 108 or more yards in three of his past four games and still added 12.26 expected points to the offense despite not scoring.
- Darren Waller finally cashed in with two touchdowns. He had 126 yards to go along with it, generating 12.70 Reception NEP. Waller now has two games with at least 12 Reception NEP. The rest of the NFL's tight ends have two (both Mark Andrews (14.14.) and T.J. Hockenson (12.09) did it back in Week 1).
