Should You Draft Sam LaPorta or T.J. Hockenson in 2025?

Thanks for dropping by for another edition of Fantasy Faceoff. Here’s the gist:

The “faceoff” is an examination of two players at the same position who have comparable price tags according to current ADP. The purpose of the exercise is to decide who’s the better fantasy pick for season-long redraft leagues in 2025 by stacking up the cases for and against each player side by side. Who stands up to scrutiny the best? That’s the question!

This week, our subjects are Detroit Lions tight end Sam LaPorta (ADP TE4) and T.J. Hockenson of the Minnesota Vikings (ADP TE5).

(All stats per our NFL StatsHub unless otherwise noted)

Sam LaPorta, TE, Detroit Lions

The Case for LaPorta

We love nothing more than a player who can waltz right into the league and put up great numbers, and that’s exactly what LaPorta did in 2023.

The former Iowa standout introduced himself to fantasy managers by setting the Super Bowl era rookie tight end records for both receptions (86) and receiving touchdowns (10; tied with Rob Gronkowski in 2010). Although that catch record held for all of one season until Brock Bowers came around last year to beat it, that’s no small feat and we shouldn’t ignore that achievement.

But let’s not get too hung up on LaPorta’s first season. He’s been pretty solid across the board in both years he’s been around, and actually sits top five among tight ends in multiple statistical categories since entering the professional ranks, per Stathead:

• Targets — 203; fifth
• Receptions — 146; fourth
• Receiving Yards — 1,615; fourth
• Touchdowns — 17; first

It doesn’t take a data scientist to know that early production is a strong indicator of future success. That’s exactly what we have here with LaPorta. It might seem a bit goofy to end this section here, but what else is there to say? He’s shown up, balled out and put up an average of 12.54 PPR points per game across two seasons that ranks sixth-best at the position. It’s not like he just stumbled into being ADP TE4 out of nowhere.

The Case Against LaPorta

Just to get this out of the way, I mentioned in a previous edition of this series when talking about Jameson Williams that the Lions’ loss of former offensive coordinator Ben Johnson could be a problem. He led the playcalling charge for a unit that finished no lower than seventh in the league in team offensive DVOA across his three seasons on the job between 2022 and 2024.

Now that Johnson’s in Chicago as the Bears’ new head coach, it wouldn’t be a huge shock to see the Lions’ offense dip just a bit. If Johnson is as much of a wizard as he’s regarded to be, that might cause some issues. Still, that’s speculative, and LaPorta has bigger concerns that who his OC is ahead of him.

For reasons that are somewhat hard to explain, LaPorta just wasn’t as good in 2024. His usage diminished in a way that was puzzling, although he remained fantasy relevant, posting an average of 11.2 PPR points per game that stood 10th best at the position. But that’s not quite the output we’re hoping for from a high-end player like him.

To make this easier, let’s just use a handy chart with some key stats from LaPorta in 2023 and 2024 side-by-side. Some of the differences will be fairly obvious, while other measures will be annoyingly similar across seasons:

If there’s any reason to assign to this diminished involvement, one could point to LaPorta’s health early in the season. Not only did LaPorta pick up an ankle sprain in Week 3 against the Arizona Cardinals, but he missed a couple of weeks during training camp with a hamstring issue as well. It’s hard to imagine he operated at full strength until later on in the calendar.

That’s honestly why LaPorta’s snap share and route participation numbers from both seasons were included here, in order to highlight the fact that it’s not like the Lions played him much less. The man was still out there on the field plenty, but the team just didn’t work to get him the ball as much.

In fairness, however, LaPorta looked much better from Week 12 onward, finishing the season with an average of 7.3 targets per game and 13.6 PPR points per game that ranked sixth-best among tight ends in that span. That’s much closer to the version of LaPorta we saw as a rookie, so perhaps this is all just a health thing.

But if that isn’t the case for any reason, and everything I wrote in that prior article about Jameson Williams fully ascending comes true, it might be complicated for LaPorta to ever fully get back to his former self. There’s not a ton of reason to believe that’ll be the case necessarily, but the job here is to outline poor scenarios.

T.J. Hockenson, TE, Minnesota Vikings

The Case for Hockenson

Hockenson has been one of the best in the game at his position since entering the league.

After a slow rookie campaign, he’s finished as the TE7 or better in PPR points per game across each season between 2020 and 2023, including a pair of campaigns within the top four to round out the tail end. His highest finish came in 2023, his first full season with the Minnesota Vikings, in which Hockenson ranked as the TE2 with a stellar 14.7 point-per-game output. We love a good track record, folks.

He’s truly become an integral part of the Vikings’ offense since joining the team, and the results speak for themselves. Just looking at some raw counting stats, Hockenson has registered the third-most targets (275) and the fourth-most receptions (196) of any tight end in the NFL from his arrival in Week 9 of 2022 onward, per Stathead. Just to give an idea of how dominant that is, he ranks ahead of some recognizable names like George Kittle and Mark Andrews in this span.

Now, fantasy managers who rostered the big man last year might be a bit frustrated with what they got, but no one can really fault him for having a bit of a down 2024 considering his circumstances. First, remember that Hockenson opened the season on the reserve/PUP list stemming from a torn ACL and MCL suffered in December 2023. That’s no small injury to come back from!

The Vikings took it easy with Hockenson, and we didn’t see him play again until Week 9 last year. Even then, the coaching staff didn’t have him play on more than 50% of the team’s offensive snaps in a game until Week 12. In essence, we only got seven weeks of “full” Hockenson, so we shouldn’t be too overly worried about gleaning anything from his stats.

It was just a lost year, but history tell us considerably more positive things about this player than negative. There’s more evidence of Hockenson being a top dog tight end, and we should be most inclined to believe that’s more of the guy we’ll see in 2025.

The Case Against Hockenson

We’ll get to more tangible concerns in a little bit, but it’s best to rip this bandage off real quick. Yes, it’s true that we don’t know how effective J.J. McCarthy will be as the Vikings’ starter after missing all of his rookie year with a torn meniscus. It’s a huge question mark that affects the whole time. Bam — the low-hanging fruit has now been grabbed.

That out of the way, an elite tight end is generally a top-two target earner in their offense. We know that Hockenson has historically been a major focus when healthy, but what if last year’s emergence of wide receiver Jordan Addison put some of Hockenson’s elite status in jeopardy? Let’s say for all intents and purposes that it does.

To give shape to the type of threat Addison represents, I’ve pulled some numbers from the 20 combined games he’s played with both Justin Jefferson and T.J. Hockenson to date. Remember, Jefferson missed seven weeks of Addison’s rookie year in 2023 with a hamstring injury, and we know about Hockenson last year. It’s more than a bit cherry-picky, I know, but it’s about as good a look at the shift in Addison’s role in the “full” Vikings offense as we can get:

To reiterate, there’s absolutely cherry-picking going on. There’s no attempt here to obscure that or mislead anyone. But I stand by the inclusion of this information because Addison’s increased numbers in that chart represent the size of the genie the Vikings would put back in the bottle because Hockenson is healthier in 2025.

We don’t know that they’ll do that, but we can’t assume that they won’t either, and the purpose of this exercise is to account for any distinct possibilities that may arise. That’s all those numbers represent: a possibility.

If we want to talk about a more direct threat, we could discuss Josh Oliver, the Vikings’ primary blocking tight end who inked a three-year, $23.25 million extension recently. But he only appeared on 42.2% of Minnesota’s offensive snaps in 10 games with Hockenson last year, which isn’t a far cry from the 39.6% snap share he logged the year prior. No one should be too worried about Oliver.

Apologies if that felt jumbled, but when looking at a player as rock solid as Hockenson has been for years, you’ve got to think outside of the box a little. Hopefully, the whole Addison thing didn’t throw anyone too much.

The Verdict: Sam LaPorta

Both players are excellent and have cases against them that are largely in the “what if?” category. It stinks to have to be nitpicky in this exercise, but if I were to believe in one of them as more likely to be a real thing, it would be Jordan Addison sticking as a major piece of the Vikings offense.

It does really seem based on everything I could find that LaPorta’s struggles last season stemmed from health. To be clear, fantasy managers probably won’t regret choosing either player, but give me LaPorta here.