NFL

The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 5

Aaron Jones had a four-touchdown game. Was he actually better than the Texans' offensive studs in 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:

PlayerPositionPassing
NEP
Rushing
NEP
Reception
NEP
Rating
Will FullerWR20.26100
Deshaun WatsonQB36.683.83100
Aaron JonesRB9.265.33100
Christian McCaffreyRB-1.476.907.64100
Amari CooperWR17.50100
D.J. CharkWR16.46100
Chris GodwinWR16.1799
Adam ThielenWR15.5799
Michael ThomasWR14.9699
Kyler MurrayQB9.758.0892
Phillip LindsayRB4.851.4992
Josh JacobsRB4.601.7091
Kirk CousinsQB18.96-0.7891
Russell WilsonQB17.241.2591
David JohnsonRB1.474.6691
Dalvin CookRB-1.237.0990
Cooper KuppWR10.8588
Sony MichelRB3.472.0588
Chase EdmondsRB4.451.0688
Alvin KamaraRB1.231.592.6888


- Will Fuller dominated in Week 5, hauling in 14 of 16 targets for 217 yards and 3 touchdowns. His 20.26 Reception NEP are a season-high. Only Amari Cooper's Week 14 (23.43 Reception NEP) has been better since the start of 2018. Deshaun Watson also posted a perfect 100 this week after going 28 of 33 for 426 yards and 5 touchdowns. Watson also added 47 rushing yards on 4 carries. His 36.68 Passing NEP are the most in a single game since the start of the 2018 season.

- Aaron Jones totaled 182 yards and 4 touchdowns on 26 touches in a road win over the Dallas Cowboys. Christian McCaffrey generated 237 yards on 25 touches and scored 3 times. Each back added at least 13.0 NEP to their teams' outcomes in Week 5.

- Two more receivers posted 100 ratings: Amari Cooper (11 catches, 226 yards, 1 touchdown) and D.J. Chark (8 catches, 164 yards, and 2 touchdowns). In a week that put the spotlight on the Houston Texans, Cooper and Chark's huge games got overshadowed.