The 2023 NFL Draft is here! After months of waiting, we finally know where the 2023 NFL Draft class will land. This information shapes the outlook for rookies in 2023 and beyond. We’re going to have you covered throughout and following the 2023 NFL Draft to help you prepare for your fantasy football leagues. Next up for many will be dynasty rookie drafts. To help you prepare to make your dynasty rookie draft picks, let’s dive into Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft profile as well as Pat Fitzmaurice’s dynasty rookie draft outlook for Sam LaPorta.
Dynasty Rookie Picks & Predictions: Lions Draft Sam LaPorta
Let’s first see what NFL Draft expert Thor Nystrom says about Sam LaPorta.
Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft Outlook & Player Comp
Player comparison: Owen Daniels
LaPorta is criminally underrated. His unique game will translate cleanly to the NFL. He’s a bit of a throwback in the mold of Owen Daniels.
LaPorta is an extremely versatile weapon. Last year, his snaps were distributed about as evenly as any tight end in this entire draft class – 30.1% slot, 20.5% wide, and 48.4% inline. The year before, he played 69.2% of his snaps inline. These snaps came in about as bad of an offensive environment as you can imagine. Iowa finished No. 130 out of 131 FBS teams in yards per game. LaPorta was force-fed targets in that horrid Iowa offense – and defenses still had a very difficult time slowing him down.
For a 240-plus pounder, LaPorta is shockingly agile and sudden – both with the ball and also along his routes. He knows how to get open. Against zone coverage, LaPorta quickly identifies the soft spot and makes himself available. Against man, LaPorta neutralizes his man by splitting him down the middle, altering tempo and footwork to cover his tracks, and snapping off sudden route breaks. He leaves flat-footed defenders a few yards in his wake as he snaps his head back to the quarterback.
LaPorta is your quintessential chain mover. In the last two years, 74 of LaPorta’s 111 catches went for first downs or touchdowns (66.7%). The Hawkeye offense would have been historically-impotent without him. Don’t hold LaPorta’s low touchdown total against him. Last season, the Hawkeyes scored only 19 offensive touchdowns – four individual players scored more. A mere seven of those touchdowns came on passing plays. LaPorta finished with 24 more catches and 271 more yards than any other Iowa receiver last year. It was the second-straight year he’d led both categories by margin.
LaPorta’s special sauce comes when he has the ball in his hands. This is when his agility, vision, and power coalesce. He’s a bull-in-a-china-shop runner who weaves through traffic and doles out punishment at the contact point. If you come at LaPorta from an off-angle in space, get ready for your nose to meet your facemask via one of his nasty stiff arms. Last year, LaPorta was No. 1 among all FBS tight ends with 20 missed tackles forced. That’s the fifth-highest single-season total for a tight end over the nine seasons PFF has tracked the stat.
LaPorta was a strong, workmanlike run blocker in college. But this area of his game could use refinement. LaPorta shows much potential as a blocker in space, but his aggressive nature works against him – he can come in too hot and only deliver a glancing shot or overextend himself into contact and get slipped. In tighter quarters, you like LaPorta’s haste in getting to the correct shoulder to win leverage, but he simply doesn’t have the play power to neutralize power ends. With some technical work, LaPorta projects as a solid space blocker working out of the slot. But against teams with powerful, long-levered ends, you’d prefer someone else inline handling that assignment.
LaPorta needs to cut down his 9.4% drop rate from last season (career: 8.4%). He reminded me a little of Quentin Johnston in terms of technique at the catch point in that both players are by-the-book extenders on the difficult catches – downfield, full-extension stabs of errant throws outside their frames – and more nonchalant on the easy stuff. Like Johnston, LaPorta sometimes appears to be thinking about his run-after-the-catch on the easy stuff. This is when the ball gets more into their frames, leading to a few extra flubs. LaPorta needs to understand that he’s a preternaturally skilled runner who doesn’t need to sacrifice catch-point technique for head starts in that department.
Lastly, while LaPorta is a problem in the short-and-intermediate areas, he’s not as effective down the field. He also needs to separate to give himself a shot to flex his run-after-the-catch muscles. Over LaPorta’s career, he was a mere 18-of-44 in contested situations.
2023 Dynasty Rookie Draft Outlook: Sam LaPorta
Less than a year after getting rid of one Iowa tight end, T.J. Hockenson, the Lions added another, drafting Sam LaPorta with the 34th overall pick. The Lions clearly held LaPorta in high esteem since they took him ahead of Notre Dame’s Michael Mayer, who was thought to be a slam-dunk first-rounder. LaPorta should quickly become fantasy viable, particularly with Lions WR Jameson Williams having to serve a six-game gambling suspension at the start of the season and Detroit having few other pass-catching weapons other than WR Amon-Ra St. Brown.
Iowa has had some very good tight ends during Kirk Ferentz’s 24 years as the Hawkeyes’ head coach — Dallas Clark, Noah Fant and T.J. Hockenson among them — but LaPorta has more career catches (153) and receiving yards (1,786) than any tight end in school history. FantasyPros college football and NFL draft analyst Thor Nystrom calls LaPorta “criminally underrated” and compares him to former Texans TE Owen Daniels, who had three seasons with more than 60 catches and more than 700 receiving yards.
LaPorta is a dangerous pass catcher who can line up in a variety of spots — in-line, in the slot or out wide. The 6-3, 245-pound LaPorta ran a 4.59 at the NFL Scouting Combine, giving him an 85th percentile speed score, according to PlayerProfiler.com. LaPorta plays fast, too, using his quickness and agility to create separation and make himself available to the quarterback. LaPorta is tough to bring down after the catch — he led all FBS tight ends with 20 missed tackles forced in 2022.
LaPorta is worthy of a late-first-round pick in 1QB dynasty rookie drafts — and maybe even a mid-first in TE-premium formats. In superflex leagues, he’s likely to come off the board in the top half of the second round.
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