The fantasy football narrative that rookie tight ends can’t make a huge impact for your team was thoroughly debunked when Sam LaPorta finished his first year in the NFL as the TE1 overall.
Should fantasy managers expect LaPorta to repeat as the best fantasy TE in all of football or be weary of some potential regression in 2024?
Sam LaPorta’s 2024 Fantasy Forecast
LaPorta’s 86 receptions for 889 yards and 10 TDs helped him finish his first year in the NFL as the TE1 overall in fantasy football. In other words, if you threw a late-round pick on the rookie TE in your fantasy draft, he likely helped elevate your fantasy team to the fantasy playoffs last year with him vastly outperforming his ADP.
Yet, can fantasy managers expect the same level of greatness in 2024?
When you take a closer look at LaPorta’s positional rankings in some major categories, they certainly suggest he wasn’t a player who simply fell into an outstanding season in a high-powered offense.
Sam LaPorta’s 2023 Stats and Positional Ranks:
- Targets: 120 (fifth)
- Receptions: 86 (fourth)
- Yards: 889 (fifth)
- TD: 10 (first)
- YAC: 358 (seventh)
- Yards Per Route Run: 1.78 (sixth)
LaPorta’s numbers certainly suggest he is a top-five fantasy option at the tight end position but fall a bit short of suggesting he should be the unquestioned TE1 overall heading into fantasy football drafts in 2024.
There could be some pitfalls that come with the expectations of TE1 overall. Scoring double-digit touchdowns isn’t easy at any position, which could lead to some regression in that department.
LaPorta’s 15 red-zone targets are certainly a solid mark but ranked fourth at the TE position behind Travis Kelce, David Njoku, and Jake Ferguson. Additionally, LaPorta actually saw eight fewer targets than his teammate Amon-Ra St. Brown in the red area last season.
Outside of that, though, I don’t see how LaPorta’s role gets reduced in any significant way in 2024. The Lions didn’t add any noteworthy target competition this offseason, they brought back their offensive coordinator (Ben Johnson), and projecting a significantly expanded role for Jameson Williams may not come at the expense of LaPorta’s volume in the offense.
It is also worth mentioning that it is entirely possible LaPorta actually improves as a player from his rookie season to his second year in the league, which makes another overall TE1 finish well within the range of outcomes in 2024.
When you are being selected ahead of Kelce at the TE position in fantasy drafts, you know expectations are sky-high heading into the upcoming NFL season.
LaPorta’s ADP currently rests at No. 30 overall, the TE1 off the board, which firmly puts him in the third round of fantasy drafts. Other players going in this range include Michael Pittman Jr., Jaylen Waddle, Josh Jacobs, and Josh Allen.
There is always a great amount of roster construction strategy that goes into consideration when investing early draft capital into a QB or TE when most leagues require you to start just one of those players every week.
I’ve always preferred to build the core of my fantasy roster with some combination of RBs and WRs through the first four rounds because of the sheer number of players you are required to start every week at those positions. When you select the first tight end off the board in your fantasy draft, you are doing so with the expectation they will give you a significant positional advantage at that position.
The draft day price tag of a third-round pick for the top tight end in fantasy football doesn’t feel like a reach at all, but it is simply not my personal preference of how to construct my roster. Positional scarcity plays a factor in this for me, as I believe I can find similar tight end production a couple of rounds later.
Kyle Soppe’s Fantasy Insight on Sam LaPorta
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.
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.
