Sam LaPorta’s Fantasy Ceiling Has Changed, But He’s Still a Strong TE1

Sam LaPorta’s rookie season set a standard that was always going to be hard to maintain. After immediately finishing as fantasy’s TE1, the former Iowa standout has remained efficient and attached to one of the league’s best offenses, but the target tree around him has gotten far more crowded.

With Amon-Ra St. Brown still dominating underneath, Jameson Williams fully established as Detroit’s explosive WR2, and Jahmyr Gibbs commanding touches out of the backfield, LaPorta’s fantasy case is less about chasing the overall TE1 ceiling and more about buying a stable, efficient piece of a high-scoring offense.

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Sam LaPorta’s Career

From knocking Travis Kelce off his perch on Tight End Mountain to becoming a usable-if-unexciting TE1, Sam LaPorta has had quite the interesting first three seasons in the league. His short career hasn’t been all that different from the team he plays for: the highest of highs, a few frustrating detours, and some bad injury luck cutting seasons short. But through it all, the offense has remained solid, finishing as a top-5 scoring offense throughout.

LaPorta’s fall has had less to do with being in a great offensive environment and more to do with a growing competition for touches since his rookie season.

Back during the former Iowa Hawkeye’s breakout rookie season, his main competition for looks were Amon-Ra St. Brown, fellow rookie Jahmyr Gibbs, and depth that included Josh Reynolds and Kalif Raymond. While Jameson Williams was technically on the team, he served the first four weeks of the season on suspension for violating the NFL’s gambling policy and was more or less in the doghouse until the end of the season. Once he was locked in as the clear WR2 heading into 2024, it became obvious quickly that it would be a problem for LaPorta’s ceiling outcome.

Despite producing efficiently throughout his three-year career, the tight end’s target share has dropped from 22.6% without Williams on the field down to 18.5% when he’s been able to suit up. And an even more drastic change has come on where those targets are coming from. With Williams practically made in a lab for field-stretching and after-the-catch intermediate targets, LaPorta has drifted closer to the line of scrimmage, looking more like a high-efficiency short-area option than the downfield/slot mismatch archetype we associate with Kyle Pitts or Brock Bowers.

This change in usage has gradually reduced his team air yards share from 21.5% to 18.2% to 15.9%, or from 6th to 9th to 12th among the league’s tight ends. In further potentially damning news, the team’s 12-personnel usage dropped off a cliff once LaPorta went down with a back injury, allowing former third-rounder Isaac TeSlaa to see an increase in playing time from 21.8% through the first ten weeks up to 58.5% through the remainder of the season. This was obviously tied directly to LaPorta’s injury, but if TeSlaa earned a larger role in the process, it adds one more minor complication to the target tree.

The offense is likely to remain robust, but how many pieces can it support week in, week out?

The Lions’ Offense in 2026

The first season without Ben Johnson went better than expected, but it didn’t happen without a couple of hiccups. Though Detroit maintained its streak of top-five finishes in scoring and points per drive, it did so with head coach Dan Campbell wresting play-calling duties from OC John Morton halfway through the season. Morton was subsequently fired after the season, with the team bringing in Drew Petzing, who had been made available after the Cardinals booted Jonathan Gannon.

With the combined efforts of Campbell/Morton, the Lions finished 7th in EPA/dropback (0.142), but only 27th in EPA/rush attempt (-0.089), the latter of which dropped precipitously from 11th and 3rd-place finishes the previous two seasons. Last year also saw an uptick in neutral-game passing rate to 57.2% (9th-highest), up from 54.9% in 2023-2024, the 9th-lowest mark over that two-year span. The ineffectiveness of the run game, after being so dominant in past seasons, has already raised questions about whether Campbell will continue to handle play-calling duties or Petzing will take that mantle.

But the relative ineptitude on the ground despite having Gibbs, one of the league’s best do-it-all backs, likely has more to do with a Lions offensive line that has fallen from “arguably the best in the league” down to “league-average or slightly above.” We also now have Isiah Pacheco in the mix with David Montgomery out the door, and that could impact run/pass splits as much or more than an o-line or play-caller will. Pacheco has proven that he’s not a back a team should be relying on for a heavy workload, so the odds that the team reverts closer to a 50-50 split on a down-to-down basis seem fraught.

Jared Goff hasn’t finished lower than 6th in raw dropbacks over these last three years, regardless of who is calling the plays, and we should expect more of that team-wide target goodness to continue in 2026.

Projecting the Lions’ Pass-Catchers in Fantasy

It would be the easy way out to simply say “everything will be the same as it was last year,” but, well, I think that’s the most likely outcome. The team could very well continue to use slightly less 12-personnel moving forward to get TeSlaa more involved, but that’s more likely to mean his targets per game will jump from 1.6 to 2.0 than have a truly negative impact on any of his teammates. And besides, LaPorta just saw a career-high 40.4% of his routes come from the slot, where he had a strong 1.64 YPRR and a 76.5% catch rate, it’s hard to see why they’d move away from that.

With the team moving on from Montgomery, we could see some more goal-line work head to the pass-catchers, though. Over the last three seasons, Montgomery has had 52 rush attempts from inside the opponents’ five-yard line, turning them into 22 touchdowns. Over his career, Pacheco has had 22 such carries, converting them into 10 scores, only one of which has come over the last two seasons. Pacheco is likely to work in a Diet Montgomery role, but there’s good reason to believe he won’t be as efficient around the goal line or elsewhere.

So, maybe we can spread an extra 4-5 touchdowns to the Lions’ pass-catchers, but that doesn’t change where they’re already going; St. Brown is a locked-in top-5 WR option, JaMo a strong WR2, TeSlaa a late-round best ball dart throw as a fringe WR5/6, and our subject is once again an easy bet to finish as a strong mid-tier TE1.

Bottom Line

• Sam LaPorta is no longer being drafted as the overall TE1, and that is probably where the buying window opens back up. The target ceiling has been squeezed by Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, and Jahmyr Gibbs, but LaPorta has remained efficient and attached to one of the NFL’s most productive offenses.
• There are still moving pieces in Detroit, namely Drew Petzing’s arrival, Dan Campbell’s role in play-calling, and a backfield transition from David Montgomery to Isiah Pacheco. But the most likely outcome is not a full offensive overhaul. It is another high-volume Jared Goff passing offense with enough scoring chances to keep multiple fantasy options afloat.
• According to Underdog ADP, LaPorta is coming off boards as the TE6 near the beginning of the ninth round. The buy-in there is all about how you’ve constructed your roster to this point; hopefully, if you’re looking for a tight end in that range, it means you have a strong RB and WR room. If that’s the case, he’s a fantastic click while other leaguemates are left sorting through the Xavier Worthy/Michael Wilson/Ricky Pearsall tier of pass-catchers.