Sam LaPorta

Sam LaPorta finished 2025 as the number 27 tight end in total PPR scoring — but the number 7 tight end in PPR per game among players with at least six games. That gap tells the whole story: when LaPorta was on the field, he was a top-tier fantasy tight end. He just only played nine games. This was an availability-shortened year on top of a healthy usage profile in a top-five passing offense, and the per-game rate confirms the talent never left. LaPorta's 2025 isn't decline — it's nine missed weeks that gutted the total line while the rate stats stayed loud.

Now let's dig into the numbers. Across those nine games, LaPorta caught 40 balls on 49 targets for 489 yards and 3 touchdowns — an 82 percent catch rate on a 19 percent target share, a genuine featured-pass-catcher workload in an offense where Amon-Ra St. Brown saw 172 targets. He averaged 11.9 PPR per game, but the tell is the variance: this was boom-or-bust, not steady floor. Four games above 13 PPR, including a 21.7-point peak against the Vikings and a 20.2-point game in Cincinnati — paired with floor games of 4.5, 5.6, and 6.9. When Jared Goff and the passing game leaned tight end, LaPorta smashed. When the script went elsewhere, he disappeared. The touchdown ecosystem was there too — the Lions ranked fifth in red-zone touchdown rate at 69.6 percent and Goff threw 34 touchdowns, second in the league. LaPorta got 3 of them. That's the single biggest drag on the total-points ranking.

The play that captures the per-game upside came in week 9 against Minnesota. Fourth and four from the Vikings' 40, scoreless first quarter, and Goff went deep middle to LaPorta out of the shotgun — 40-yard touchdown. Twenty in the air, twenty after the catch, on a converted fourth down. That's the LaPorta archetype in one snap: trusted on a high-leverage down, used as a real vertical threat from the tight end spot, finishing in the end zone. When he was healthy and the plan involved him, Detroit wasn't using him as a checkdown. They were using him as a weapon — and the per-game ranking reflects exactly that.