DET · TE
Projected Points (PPR)
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Sam LaPorta remains the clear top tight end on Detroit's depth chart, and the early-season workload backs that up. Through two games he has played 88.7% of the offensive snaps, drawing fifteen targets already. That is a heavy early rate for a tight end in this offense, and it puts him on pace to comfortably exceed last year's 49 targets across a full season. The eleven catches on those fifteen targets give him a 73.3% catch rate so far, a touch below his 2025 mark of 81.6%, but the volume itself is the more important signal. Jared Goff is throwing him the ball early and often, and four of his targets have already come in the red zone this year, matching the total he saw across all of 2025. That red-zone share matters for a tight end whose touchdown production has been modest relative to his catch volume. Around him, Jahmyr Gibbs anchors the backfield touches, while Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams occupy the outside receiving roles, which leaves the middle of the field and the shorter, high-percentage looks disproportionately to LaPorta. That structural role — the safety-valve, chain-mover tight end in a offense that likes to spread the ball — is exactly what has produced his current TE6 finish through two weeks, a sharp jump from his TE27 finish over nine games a year ago.
The case for Sam LaPorta starts with target share and snap share, both of which are up. At 88.7% of the snaps and fifteen targets in two games, he is playing like a featured piece of this passing game rather than a complementary one. His 27 PPR points and 13.5 points per game through two weeks represent a real improvement over an 11.9 per-game pace across nine games in 2025, and a finish of TE6 so far dwarfs his TE27 finish from a year ago. If Jared Goff continues distributing targets at this rate, and if the red-zone role expands even modestly beyond the four looks he has already collected, LaPorta has a real path to being a weekly starter at his position all season.,The case against him is built on a smaller sample and on rate stability. Two games is not nine games, and nine games last season only produced 106.9 PPR points, a total that reflects real per-target inefficiency at times. His catch rate has actually dipped from 81.6% to 73.3% early this year, and his yards per reception have fallen from 12.2 to 9.1, meaning the current point total is being driven more by raw volume than by explosive or efficient usage. A tight end who is catching shorter passes at a lower rate is vulnerable to touchdown variance evening out, especially since only three of his 2025 receiving touchdowns came across a much larger sample of targets. There is also the structural question of target competition: Amon-Ra St. Brown remains the top receiving option in this offense by role, and Jameson Williams commands vertical opportunities as the second receiver. Both compete for the same passing-game pie that LaPorta is drawing from, and if Goff's target distribution normalizes toward those two, the tight end volume could recede toward last year's level. Weighing the two arguments, the volume signal is more persuasive than the efficiency worry. Fifteen targets in two games with 88.7% snap share is not a small sample fluke; it reflects real offensive design, and design tends to persist more than efficiency swings do. The counter-argument about touchdown regression is fair, but touchdown variance affects fantasy production at every position and shouldn't be treated as unique risk here. The more durable takeaway is that LaPorta is being used as a featured target in the middle of the field in an offense that already features Jahmyr Gibbs on the ground and Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams on the perimeter, which gives him a clearly defined and repeatable role rather than a boom-or-bust one.
Sam LaPorta should be in fantasy lineups as a starting tight end right now, not a flex-only option and not a bench stash. The target volume — fifteen looks across two games, four of them in the red zone — is the kind of workload that supports weekly confidence at a position where target competition often leaves the format short on reliable options. His current TE6 finish reflects that role, and there is little reason to bench a tight end drawing this much of Jared Goff's attention given the alternative options most rosters carry at the position. Managers should watch two things that would change this evaluation: a sustained drop in catch rate below the 73.3% mark he has shown so far, and a shift in red-zone usage back toward Amon-Ra St. Brown or Jameson Williams rather than LaPorta. If his per-game target share slides back toward the 49-targets-in-nine-games pace of last season, his weekly ceiling would shrink accordingly, and he would move back into more matchup-dependent territory rather than an every-week starter. For now, though, the role supports full confidence: start him, do not flex him behind other options at his position on your roster, and do not treat his early production as a fluke that needs regression before it can be trusted.
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