Detroit Lions TE Sam LaPorta was a second-round pick in 2023 and wasted no time reminding fantasy football managers of another second-round pick that dominated our game for years.
Like Rob Gronkowski, LaPorta scored 10 touchdowns in his introductory season. After establishing himself as NFL-ready, Gronk graced fantasy managers with a 90-1,327-17 stat line in Year 2. Penciling in such a season for Detroit’s budding star is obviously optimistic, but he is already being drafted as the best tight end in the league with confidence.
Is that right?
Sam LaPorta’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- PPR Fantasy Points: 258(164 non-PPR)
- Receptions: 94
- Receiving Yards: 974
- Receiving TDs: 11
Lions TE Sam LaPorta looking like a veteran in his 2nd NFL game. Works back towards Goff and gets open for the completion. #OnePride pic.twitter.com/ld1pERPKRT
— Russell Brown (@RussNFLDraft) July 1, 2024
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 16. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft LaPorta This Year?
Some rookies take time to work into a viable role, and others need game reps to adjust to the speed of the pro game. Many need both. LaPorta … needed neither.
During his first month in the NFL, he averaged 5.5 catches per game, scored, and possessed an 81.5% catch rate. Some doubted his fast start, but he responded with a pair of multi-score efforts and three more double-digit target contests during the regular season.
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As if fantasy managers needed more evidence that the pride of Iowa wasn’t your normal rookie, he led the Lions in catches (nine), targets (13), and receiving yards (97) in their biggest game of the season in San Francisco with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.
This kid is being billed as the future of the position in fantasy circles, and it’s hard to formulate a counterargument given his youth and the stability of this offense. He’s coming off the board at the beginning of Round 3, essentially a full round ahead of the unanimous TE1 for the better part of the past decade, Travis Kelce.
His postseason success meant nothing for fantasy purposes last season, but it showed me that this team is ready to value LaPorta based on his talent and not his age. He was Jared Goff’s safety net, grabbing 21 balls over that stretch, and not one of them gaining more than 16 yards. I’d spin that as a concern for a receiver, but at the tight end position, the value of an elite floor is Priority No. 1 in my eyes.
Jameson Williams is a popular sleeper pick, and I have him ranked ahead of the industry ADP (average draft position) at this point–– that can come true without costing LaPorta an ounce of production. Last season, Amon-Ra St. Brown was about as good as you could possibly hope (119-1,515-10 in 16 games) while the Kalif Raymond/Josh Reynolds tandem combined for a 75-1,097-6 stat line.
Reynolds is now with the Denver Broncos, and the Lions are entering a season where they are fully aware of LaPorta’s talents; the WR3 role in this offense is more likely to see a dip in usage than a rise.
Even if you think Raymond’s role from a season ago is sustained, we have all of Reynolds’ looks (3.8 per game) to redistribute. St. Brown can’t possibly see much more attention, and Williams, while talented, doesn’t project as someone who will beat defenses with volume.
If we take a somewhat conservative path and give one-third of those looks to the backfield, one-third to the TE position, and one-third to the receivers, LaPorta emerges as exactly what he is being drafted as: the TE1 with a bullet.
In his first season, LaPorta saw 88.2% of Detroit’s TE targets, and that means that — using this simplistic back-of-napkin math — we are giving him 1.1 more targets per game. If we carry over his per-target production from 2023, that means an additional 36.6 PPR points.
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Using that logic, we land on a 275.9 fantasy-point total for LaPorta in 2024, a number that comes in just shy of what Kelce averaged from 2017-22 (279.1). If we are comparing current LaPorta to peak Kelce, his ADP is a round too low.
- Kelce: Load management concerns (late season fades)
- Trey McBride: Spike in target competition via Marvin Harrison Jr.
- Mark Andrews: Touchdown concerns alongside Derrick Henry
I’m not suggesting that LaPorta is perfect, but his status as the TE1 isn’t in question for me, and that makes him a viable option at this point in the draft. I’m not entering many leagues this season with the intent to pay up for an increasingly deep position.
Give me Evan Engram 40 picks later or a flier on a player like Taysom Hill/Luke Musgrave outside of the top 12 rounds, but if things fall a certain way, LaPorta is the top-tier TE that I feel best about.
Yes, I expect that sentence to be one I repeat with consistency over the next handful of years.
Jason Katz’s Fantasy Insight on Sam LaPorta
LaPorta is very much justified in being the top-ranked tight end. He should be the first tight end off the board in most leagues. I have Travis Kelce ahead of him, but we’re talking about splitting hairs here.
Deciding whether LaPorta is worth drafting at his ADP will be determined by positional value.
With an ADP around No. 23 overall, LaPorta is going at the 2/3 turn. At that price, the opportunity cost of taking LaPorta is a high WR2, possibly even a low WR1.
Yes, there are also running backs you can take, but the running back landscape is weird, and I’m telling you it’s OK to take the No. 1 tight end over them.
A typical high WR2 will produce around 15-16 fantasy points per game. It won’t take much in the way of progression for LaPorta to reach those numbers. That means you can get the same production from LaPorta that you’d get from a wide receiver, except LaPorta plays tight end, giving you a greater edge.
Earlier in the Summer, I said the following about LaPorta: “If LaPorta’s ADP creeps into the back end of the second round, I will be much more hesitant. While LaPorta is great, I don’t see him being able to hit 17-18 points per game. The WRs going in the second round have a higher upside, making them more worth it.” Well, here we are.
In the middle of the third, if you can put a high WR2 at tight end, that’s very much worth considering. You will definitely see LaPorta make it to the middle of the third round in some instances. But in the late second, the board would have to look a very specific way for me to push the button on a tight end over certain of the WRs.
