The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 2
Week 2 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 2.
But that's not really a concise headline.
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 from the Thursday and Sunday games.
Here are Week 2's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Matt Breida | RB | 99 |
| Patrick Mahomes | QB | 97 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | QB | 97 |
| Blake Bortles | QB | 96 |
| Brandin Cooks | WR | 96 |
| Matt Ryan | QB | 95 |
| DeSean Jackson | WR | 94 |
| Keelan Cole | WR | 94 |
| Kirk Cousins | QB | 92 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | QB | 92 |
| Will Fuller | WR | 92 |
| AJ Green | WR | 91 |
| DeAndre Hopkins | WR | 91 |
| Travis Kelce | TE | 91 |
| Jesse James | TE | 90 |
| Stefon Diggs | WR | 89 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 88 |
| Corey Clement | RB | 87 |
| Jared Goff | QB | 87 |
| Cam Newton | QB | 87 |
- Matt Breida posted the most impactful performance score of the week, thanks to 138 rushing yards on 11 carries -- including this 66-yard scamper -- and 3 catches for another 21 yards. The big touchdown run came with a 20-13 lead over the Detroit Lions, boosting the San Francisco 49ers' win odds to nearly 95%. Breida added 8.06 Rushing NEP, making him one of two running backs to add more than 2.00 Rushing NEP in Week 2.
- Patrick Mahomes, naturally, finds himself near the top of the list. Mahomes was 23 of 28 for 326 yards and 6 touchdowns. Mahomes accounted for 24.58 Passing NEP, 0.85 per drop back.
- Opposite Mahomes, Ben Roethlisberger did all he could to keep the Pittsburgh Steelers close in Week 2. Roethlisberger threw a whopping 60 times, completing 39 passes for 452 yards and 3 touchdowns. He also ran twice for nine yards and a touchdown.
- Blake Bortles and the Jacksonville Jaguars toppled the New England Patriots. Bortles netted 18.76 Passing NEP, just a shade off of Roethlisberger's 18.99. Bortles threw 45 times for 29 completions, 377 yards, and 4 touchdowns. Bortles also added 35 yards on the ground via 6 carries.
- Brandin Cooks was the week's top receiver by performance score. Cooks caught 7 of 9 targets for 159 yards in the Los Angeles Rams' 34-0 shutout over the Arizona Cardinals. Despite not scoring a touchdown, he added 13.09 expected points on his catches.
