NFL

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 Rating Passing
NEP
Rushing
NEP
Reception
NEP
Chase ClaypoolWR100-1.9216.50
Travis FulghamWR100--18.30
Brandin CooksWR99--15.33
Calvin RidleyWR98--14.26
Todd GurleyRB95-5.881.66
Derek CarrQB9417.612.37-
Travis KelceTE93--12.09
Deshaun WatsonQB9215.312.61-
Mike DavisRB92-3.263.10
Kyler MurrayQB9116.930.52-
Teddy BridgewaterQB9119.67-2.61-
DeAndre HopkinsWR90--11.17
Henry RuggsWR87--10.60
Ryan FitzpatrickQB8623.77-0.28-
Miles SandersRB85-3.841.06
Patrick MahomesQB8413.300.44-
Ben RoethlisbergerQB8414.92-1.36-
Jonathan TaylorRB83-6.120.93
Jared GoffQB8212.270.50-
Clyde Edwards-
Helaire
RB80-1.003.23


- All four of the top scores this week belonged to wide receivers, and two of them came from the same game. They didn't come quite out of nowhere, but Chase Claypool and Travis Fulgham both notched perfect 100s against one another. Claypool probably would've gone for 150 if the meter went that high. He scored four total times and had 116 total yards. Claypool was involved all over the field -- downfield targets and manufactured goal-line touches. The arrow is way up on him in Pittsburgh.

- Fulgham took advantage of a depleted Philadelphia Eagles team and corralled 10 of 13 targets for 152 yards and a touchdown. His 18.30 Reception NEP was a week-best so far of any player, higher than even Claypool's. The productive wideout from Old Dominion Monarchs could earn more run for a needy Eagles team.

- Brandin Cooks led all players in Week 6 with 161 receiving yards. He scored once on 12 targets and added 15.33 Reception NEP to the Houston Texans' offense in their first win of the season.

- Calvin Ridley's big day wasn't enough for the Atlanta Falcons to find the win column. Despite not scoring a touchdown, Ridley's 136 yards on 10 targets increased Atlanta's expected outcome by 14.26 points, good for 1.31 points per target. He has, potentially, the best role of any receiver in the NFL right now.