Ok, we know you might be a combination of a few things right now after seeing the title. Maybe you’re worried or maybe you’re mad. Maybe you’re a little more level headed and this makes sense to you. The fact is that Detroit Lions tight end Sam LaPorta did something crazy last year. Something that barely ever happens in this league. History tells us he’s he’s going to have a hard time repeating that in year two.
That’s ok though. That does not mean that LaPorta is going to have a bad year. It also doesn’t mean that he won’t be able to break the chains of history and continue to get to heights that we’ve never seen a Lions tight end get to. But it’s not going to be easy.
LaPorta had one of the best rookie seasons a tight end has ever had in NFL history. He finished with the fourth most receiving yards of all time. What we decided to do was take the the top 10 players from that list and see what they did in their second season. Here’s what we found:
Mike Ditka
Rookie year: 56 receptions, 1,076 yards, 12 touchdowns
Year two: 58 receptions, 904 yards, 5 touchdowns
Kyle Pitts
Rookie year: 68 receptions, 1,026 yards, 1 touchdown
Year two: 28 receptions, 356 yards, 2 touchdowns
Jeremy Shockey
Rookie year: 74 receptions, 894 yards, 2 touchdowns
Year two: 48 receptions, 535 yards, 2 touchdowns
Sam LaPorta
Rookie year: 86 receptions, 889 yards, 10 touchdowns
Year two: ?
Keith Jackson
Rookie year: 81 receptions, 869 yards, 6 touchdowns
Year two: 63 receptions, 648 yards, 3 touchdowns
Charle Young
Rookie year: 55 receptions, 854 yards, 6 touchdowns
Year two: 63 receptions, 696 yards, 3 touchdowns
John Mackey
Rookie year: 35 receptions, 726 yards, 7 touchdowns
Year two: 22 receptions, 406 yards, 2 touchdowns
Evan Engram
Rookie year: 64 receptions, 722 yards, 6 touchdowns
Year two: 45 receptions, 577 yards, 3 touchdowns
Cam Cleeland
Rookie year: 54 receptions, 684 yards, 6 touchdowns
Year two: 26 receptions, 325 yards, 1 touchdown
Dalton Kincaid
Rookie year: 73 receptions, 673 yards, 2 touchdowns
Year two: ?
There’s multiple takeaways here. The first is that it’s incredibly hard for tight ends to reproduce a big time rookie year in year two. None of these guys were able to do it. The second is some of these can hardly be called sophomore slumps if you really think about it.
If the penance for having a good rookie year means your stats slightly slip in year two, is that really such a bad thing? If LaPorta comes out and has a season like 70 receptions for 750 yards and six touchdowns, is that really such a bad year? Sure the numbers go down, but that’s still a very productive tight end season. That would have been 10th in receptions, eighth in receiving yards and second in touchdowns among tight ends in 2023. That’s not bad.
This doesn’t mean that LaPorta is just doomed to go through this outcome. The 11th guy on the list we were working off of actually had a better year two than his rookie year.
Bob Trumpy
Rookie year: 37 receptions, 639 yards, 3 touchdowns
Year two: 37 receptions, 835 yards, 9 touchdowns
See? This happened in 1969, but see? It can happen, but it doesn’t happen a lot. The next guy to do it wouldn’t be until 1978 when Ozzie Newsome did it. The next guy after that was Aaron Hernandez in 2011. We don’t need to talk much more about that one though.
We’ll see what year two brings for LaPorta, but there’s a good chance it’s not going to be as good as year one and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean he’ll never reach those heights again and it doesn’t mean he can’t beat history. It just means he’s going to go through the same growing pains that some of the greatest tight ends of all time had to go through.