The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 8
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 8's results:
| Player | Position | Passing NEP | Rushing NEP | Reception NEP | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooper Kupp | WR | — | — | 21.78 | 95 |
| Jared Goff | QB | 21.96 | — | — | 92 |
| David Montgomery | RB | — | 2.18 | -0.39 | 91 |
| Aaron Jones | RB | — | 2.45 | 14.35 | 90 |
| Mike Evans | WR | — | — | 18.90 | 86 |
| Daniel Jones | QB | 6.55 | 1.33 | — | 83 |
| Tyler Boyd | WR | — | -0.20 | 8.65 | 82 |
| Todd Gurley | RB | — | 2.55 | — | 74 |
| Christian McCaffrey | RB | — | 4.18 | 2.40 | 74 |
| Saquon Barkley | RB | — | -2.70 | 6.20 | 72 |
| Leonard Fournette | RB | — | -4.52 | 4.04 | 70 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 20.06 | — | — | 70 |
| Gardner Minshew | QB | 15.61 | 3.67 | — | 69 |
| Tevin Coleman | RB | — | 8.48 | 2.53 | 69 |
| Stefon Diggs | WR | — | — | 7.19 | 69 |
| Phillip Lindsay | RB | — | -1.00 | -0.78 | 68 |
| Carlos Hyde | RB | — | 2.53 | — | 67 |
| Joe Mixon | RB | — | 2.90 | 1.63 | 65 |
| Jordan Howard | RB | — | 0.12 | 1.30 | 62 |
| Andy Dalton | QB | 0.35 | 1.10 | -1.73 | 62 |
- Cooper Kupp demolished the Cincinnati Bengals in London, generating 21.78 Reception NEP on 10 targets (220 yards and a touchdown). His quarterback, Jared Goff, also was a top-two performer. His 21.96 Passing NEP was one of two marks above 17 this week.
- David Montgomery's Chicago Bears lost, but he did his part, handling 27 carries for 135 yards and a touchdown and turning 5 targets into 4 catches and 12 yards. Montgomery also played a career-best 77% snap rate in the loss.
- Aaron Jones didn't do a ton on the ground in terms of Rushing NEP (2.45) but actually ranked third among all players in Reception NEP (14.35). That is the highest single-game mark by a running back since Chris Thompson's 15.64 in Week 3 of the 2017 season.
- With 198 yards and 2 touchdowns, Mike Evans now has two games with at least 190 yards and multiple scores, which he also got in Week 3. Since that blowup game, he has had at least 89 yards in every game but one (when he didn't catch any of his three targets against the New Orleans Saints) in Week 5.
