We have updated our player values for week 2 of the NFL season and Cam Newton of the Patriots comes in as the most valuable player of the week. For those unfamiliar with our player valuation it is a metric we designed that utilizes salaries, snap counts, PFF grades, and statistics as a way to reassign the values in the NFL on a weekly basis. It is important to note that this is not a free agent value metric, but how salaries perhaps would be distributed if all contracts were created equal. You can read more about the valuation metric in our intro post from last year.
Season valuations and market visualizations are available to Premium subscribers, while we will have weekly values on the main site for the first few weeks of the year with a few random updates thereafter on the main site. If you have interest in just one individual player rather than the league as a whole their valuation for the year is updated weekly on the individual player page. You can view this weeks valuations at overthecap.com/valuation.
Players of the Week: Cam Newton and TJ Watt
Newton had a terrific game in a losing effort against the Seahawks this week throwing for nearly 400 yards while rushing for two touchdown and passing for one more. Newton’s value came in at $37.5 million.
On the defensive side TJ Watt of the Steelers took top honors at $29.6 million. Watt had two sacks, 13 pressures and 5 stops per PFF. He is going to cost a fortune to extend and should have an outside chance at becoming the first $30 million defensive player.
Team of the Week: Pittsburgh Steelers
It was a dominating effort by the Steelers players in a hard fought win against a game Broncos team that was impacted by injuries. The Steelers had a number of individual efforts on defense in particular that ramped up their value to over $350M in performance.
Notables of the Week:
Justin Herbert had a terrific debut against the Chiefs and nearly helped pull off the upset. At $30.5 million he was OTC’s 14th highest valued QB this week….CeeDee Lamb of the Cowboys put on a performance against the Falcons, coming in as our 5th ranked wide receiver at $17.9 million….The alarms are going off in Minnesota about Kirk Cousins and that is reflected here with Cousins coming in at a $9 million value for the week. $9 million is close to minimum you would be valued at if you play a full game at QB. He was the 32nd ranked QB and the worst value in the NFL considering his contract is worth $33 million….The Vikings were also our least valuable team of the week coming in at $200.8 million. Its a teamwide failure so far though Cousins will take the brunt of it…The Texans continue to be lone team that on a weekly basis can’t even match their contracted annual values.