The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 14
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 14's results:
| Player | Position | Passing NEP |
Rushing NEP |
Reception NEP |
Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austin Ekeler | RB | — | 3.89 | 11.18 | 100 |
| Aaron Jones | RB | — | 7.84 | 4.28 | 100 |
| DeAndre Hopkins | WR | — | 1.02 | 14.53 | 99 |
| A.J. Brown | WR | — | 0.89 | 14.60 | 99 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 23.55 | 3.28 | — | 99 |
| Emmanuel Sanders | WR | 3.73 | — | 10.93 | 98 |
| Christian McCaffrey | RB | — | 4.00 | 5.04 | 98 |
| Joe Mixon | RB | — | 6.28 | 2.44 | 97 |
| Ryan Tannehill | QB | 22.60 | 1.71 | — | 97 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 24.97 | -1.86 | — | 97 |
| Drew Lock | QB | 19.35 | 2.43 | — | 96 |
| Raheem Mostert | RB | — | 3.20 | 3.85 | 94 |
| Michael Thomas | WR | — | — | 11.78 | 92 |
| Derrick Henry | RB | — | 6.06 | 0.36 | 92 |
| Robby Anderson | WR | — | -0.07 | 11.60 | 91 |
| Noah Fant | TE | — | — | 11.16 | 90 |
| Jimmy Garoppolo | QB | 16.03 | 0.51 | — | 88 |
| Latavius Murray | RB | — | 4.77 | 0.82 | 88 |
| Mitchell Trubisky | QB | 10.55 | 5.39 | — | 88 |
| Brian Hill | RB | — | 5.33 | — | 87 |
- Austin Ekeler totaled 213 yards on just 12 touches, including an 84-yard touchdown reception resulting from busted coverage. Ekeler has played second fiddle to Melvin Gordon since an offensive coordinator change in Week 9 but may have earned himself even more playing time. It's his second 100-yard receiving game in the past three weeks.
- Aaron Jones earned 192 total yards on his 22 touches in a win over Washington. Jones now has 13 targets in his past two games and should be more of a focal point in the offense the rest of the way, based on reports out of Green Bay. The Packers are now 10-3 and second in the NFC.
- DeAndre Hopkins drew 13 targets and had 120 yards and a touchdown despite a blowout loss to the Denver Broncos. Hopkins has double-digit targets in six of his past eight games and added more than two touchdowns worth of expected scoring this week (14.53 Reception NEP).
- A.J. Brown lit up the Oakland Raiders. He generated 153 receiving yards and a pair of touchdowns on 7 targets. Brown has emerged as the leading receiver for the Tennessee Titans over the past three games but still averages just 5.3 targets in that sample in a run-first offense.
- Drew Brees demolished the San Francisco 49ers in the Superdome, but it still wasn't enough for a win. Brees accounted for six total touchdowns and 26.83 Total NEP in a crucial loss for the New Orleans Saints, who are now one of three 10-3 teams in the NFC.
