The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 13
Week 13 games aren't over yet, so maybe the title of this article is a little misleading. It should read something like The 20 Best Offensive Players From the Thursday and Sunday Games in Week 13.
That just doesn't flow all that well.
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 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 from the Thursday and Sunday games.
Here are Week 13's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| James White | RB | 100 |
| Allen Robinson | WR | 100 |
| Russell Wilson | QB | 99 |
| Marcus Mariota | QB | 99 |
| Richard Rodgers | TE | 99 |
| Odell Beckham | WR | 99 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | QB | 99 |
| Antonio Brown | WR | 98 |
| Dorial Green-Beckham | WR | 95 |
| TJ Yeldon | RB | 94 |
| Andy Dalton | QB | 93 |
| Mike Tolbert | RB | 92 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | QB | 91 |
| Carson Palmer | QB | 91 |
| Cam Newton | QB | 89 |
| Delanie Walker | TE | 88 |
| AJ Green | WR | 87 |
| Martavis Bryant | WR | 87 |
| Bilal Powell | RB | 86 |
| Ted Ginn Jr. | WR | 86 |
- It may be a surprise to see James White's name on top of this list, but let me explain why it's the case. Since passing is far more efficient than rushing, most running backs aren't able to accumulate high NEP totals unless they're used as a receiver out of the backfield. Since the rating scale compares a player to other guys at his position, White comes out golden, because he's not seeing a ton of carries to really pull down his NEP totals. That, and he was a beast out of the backfield yesterday, of course, catching 10 passes for 115 yards and a score.
- Allen Robinson had 10 catches himself, hauling them in on 15 targets for 153 yards and 3 scores. Entering the week, A-Rob ranked fifth in Reception NEP. He'll still rank behind DeAndre Hopkins, Odell Beckham, Julio Jones and Antonio Brown exiting the week, but it's been an incredible breakout campaign for the Jags' second-year wideout.
- There were a ton of huge quarterback performances this week, but none were better than Russell Wilson's, who threw just six incomplete passes against the Vikings' secondary in Minnesota. Wilson added 29.71 Net Expected Points when you factor in what he did with his legs, which was just half a point better than Marcus Mariota, who got a boost with his 87-yard touchdown run.
- Three Steelers made the top 20, as Pittsburgh posted 45 points on the Colts during Sunday night's game. Ben Roethlisberger was lights out, throwing (and rushing once) to a 26.52 NEP total. Entering the week, only Carson Palmer, Andy Dalton, and Tom Brady had been more efficient than Big Ben on a per drop back basis. That'll still be the case entering Week 14, but Roethlisberger showed everyone last night why he's one of the best passers in football.
