Sam LaPorta was the first tight end off the board in many fantasy football drafts this year, and in those he wasn't the first tight end taken in he was second.
So 12 catches for 147 yards without a touchdown through four games is obviously not the start LaPorta's fantasy managers were looking for. He's TE25 in 0.5-point PPR (TE23 in full PPR; TE24 in standard scoring).
After the Week 4 game against the Seattle Seahawks, albeit answering a question about Jahmyr Gibbs, Lions' head coach Dan Campbell mentioned LaPorta too.
"I feel like he and Sam LaPorta, both, yesterday they looked like, OK here we go, man. They got their legs back under them. They look as healthy as they've looked since the beginning of training camp, and they're on the uptick."
LaPorta had a season-high 53 yards against Seattle, and he arguably looked as good as he has all season. The ankle injury from Week 3, and a preseason hamstring issue, looked to be in the rearview mirror.
Sam LaPorta is an easy buy-low in fantasy football
Heading into Week 6, LaPorta made the list of players to buy low on in fantasy from Pro Football Focus' Nathan Jahnke.
"LaPorta had a very rough start to the season. He caught six passes for 58 yards over the first two games with a much lower target share than last season. In Week 3, he started to turn things around but began dealing with an ankle injury. He played in Week 4 and his per-route numbers were a lot better, but the Lions were both winning and losing the time of possession battle, leading to only 19 pass attempts....
"LaPorta has 2.54 yards per route run since Week 3, which is the second-best for tight ends and better than his 1.76 over all of last season. His quality of play the last two weeks has matched last season, and the volume of routes should get back to normal going forward."
"The last piece of the puzzle is touchdowns. He scored 10 times in the regular season last year and once in the playoffs. Nine of the 11 touchdowns occurred in the red zone. The Lions have been among the top teams at reaching the red zone both last season and this season, and they’ve run in the red zone a little more than passed in both seasons. The difference is last year he had a 24.2% target rate in the red zone, but this year, it’s 9.1%. Similar to his receiving production, his rate was 5.6% in the first two weeks and 25% in the last two."
"LaPorta appears to be capable of returning to the tight end he was last season, it just hasn’t led to a touchdown yet, and it’s only been shown in small samples. He should be one of the top few fantasy tight ends over the rest of the season."
The tight end landscape has demanded patience from LaPorta's fantasy managers thus far. His production can't be a whole lot worse than it's been, and the recent trends are positive as the Lions come out of their bye. Such as the LaPorta manager in your league might be willing to part with him in a trade, the buy-low window is right now.