The 20 Best Offensive Players From Week 6
Week 6 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 6.
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 6's results:
| Player | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| DeAndre Hopkins | WR | 100 |
| Devonta Freeman | RB | 99 |
| Martavis Bryant | WR | 99 |
| Keenan Allen | WR | 98 |
| Calvin Johnson | WR | 98 |
| Alshon Jeffery | WR | 97 |
| Chris Ivory | RB | 97 |
| Philip Rivers | QB | 96 |
| James Starks | RB | 96 |
| Benjamin Watson | TE | 95 |
| Greg Olsen | TE | 95 |
| Steve Smith | WR | 95 |
| Matthew Stafford | QB | 94 |
| Drew Brees | QB | 94 |
| Stefon Diggs | WR | 92 |
| Bruce Miller | FB | 91 |
| Giovani Bernard | RB | 90 |
| Lamar Miller | RB | 90 |
| Colin Kaepernick | QB | 89 |
| Brian Hoyer | QB | 89 |
- DeAndre Hopkins is on pace for roughly 190 Reception Net Expected Points this season, or expected points added on catches only. Since 2000, the highest Reception NEP total came from Torry Holt back in 2003. He finished with 168.50 Reception NEP.
- Meanwhile, Devonta Freeman added another 6.33 Rushing NEP to his season total, bringing it to over 25.00 through six games. Rushing is less effective than passing, so running backs tend to see lower scores on the ground, but Freeman's pacing towards the best running back season (on the ground) since the turn of the century, which was done by Shaun Alexander in 2005.
- Martavis Bryant's 2015 debut was a strong one, catching a pair of touchdowns. He finished with nearly 15 Reception Net Expected Points on the day, which bested teammate Antonio Brown by nearly the same amount, as Brown accumulated just 0.23 Reception NEP.
- Calvin Johnson bounced back in a big way this week, scoring a touchdown on 166 yards. For fantasy owners, look at the team's upcoming schedule, because Calvin still makes for a nice "buy" in pretend pigskin.
- Greg Olsen finished the day as the league's best tight end, and he continued to show a trend of tight ends being able to exploit the Seahawks' defense. Remember, Tyler Eifert torched them in Week 5.
