One of the buzziest players of the Detroit Lions’ minicamp rarely takes the field without smiling. It could be because he’s playing a game for a living with his “friends.”
And if you spend even a minute with Lions rookie tight end Sam LaPorta, you learn quickly that he considers anyone wearing his team’s colors his friend. Or maybe anyone he meets.
Smiling might just be LaPorta’s default.
When you’re 6 feet 3, 245 pounds and run like he does, you’d smile, too, especially if the speed came with soft hands. LaPorta’s does.
Like when he cradled a pass that whistled to the back of the end zone Monday in red zone drills, dragging his feet before stepping out of bounds, tossing the ball aside after he’d caught it as if it were nothing.
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It’s not nothing, even if the pads don’t come until training camp begins in late July; some things are that self-evident. Like hands, and footwork, and a penchant to get open, all of which have been on display since camp started two weeks ago.
In fact, there’s hardly a practice that goes by where he doesn’t make a play. His coaches see it. His quarterback sees it. His teammates see it.
He sees it, too, but doesn’t necessarily want to acknowledge it when he’s asked about the buzz he’s creating.
So, he smiles, as he did Monday after practice when a reporter told him he’d been filling his notebook with “a catch here, a catch there …”
Catches everywhere.
But there’s always more to what we see, right?
“You say you sit here and write ‘a catch here, a catch there?’ I see little mistakes all over the field and things I can just get better at,” LaPorta said.
Whoa. Self-awareness — or good media training at the University of Iowa.
I’d wager the former, that LaPorta, whom the Lions drafted at No. 34, a couple spots out of the first round, is making plays — and making early impressions — not just because he’s been blessed with some nice physical gifts, but because he sees what he can’t do, too, and, as his own toughest critic, sees what he needs to do better.
Don’t get him wrong, he’s appreciative of the buzz, because buzz means he’s making plays and his coaches are teammates are noticing. That’s dandy.
“It’s always nice receiving compliments,” he said, before deflecting into rookie football speak. “I try to maximize each day. If today is my last day, I’m doing what I love.”
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It shows. His rookie teammate, Jahmyr Gibbs, called him “hilarious” and said: “that’s my guy.”
The question is whether or not he’ll become “the guy” in the tight end room, which is crowded and experienced, and a room that Ben Johnson, the team’s offensive coordinator, leans heavily on. He likes using tight ends in his system. LaPorta offers skills at the position no one else on the roster does.
T.J. Hockenson was similar, and no, not because he played at Iowa, too. So, can LaPorta replace some of that? Give Johnson and the Lions a threat down the field at that position?
Well, he isn’t thinking about that. Not yet. Too much to learn. Too many days that “aren’t great.”
“I’ve had my fair share of tough days already,” he said … smiling.
Hey, it works for him. Besides, this was a sheepish smile, a quirky smile his tight ends coach might say, considering he thinks the word “quirky” describes his rookie tight end.
“He’s light-hearted,” said Steve Heiden, who came to Detroit by way of the Arizona Cardinals, and also by way of the tight end spot on the field — he played the position in the NFL. “Quirky … a joy to be around.”
And?
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“We’ve all been pleasantly surprised,” Heiden said. “That’s one thing you don’t know when you draft a young kid: What are the instincts like when you get him on the grass?”
Or the turf, as it may be. But, hey, we’re not here to split hairs. We’re here at minicamp — again — and it can be easy to over dissect as so many document this team, more than are usually here this time of year.
The rapidly growing interest in this team isn’t directly because of LaPorta or Gibbs or any of the other rookies who’ve been on the field in Allen Park for the last couple weeks — that wouldn’t be fair, anyway — it is because of what they represent: their leaders’ vision.
Is LaPorta more proof that Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell know how to identify and develop talent? We’ll see. As Heiden said Monday, “real” football doesn’t start until late July, when the pads come out.
Yet some fundamentals come out regardless. Heiden can see that.
“Obviously, he’s come out here and made some plays,” he said. “It’s gonna be fun to see how far we can continue to grow and develop once we get those pads on and it’s real football time.”
LaPorta understands what’s coming, as well. He knows the back-of-the-end zone, leaping catches he made Monday in traffic won’t be so easy when someone’s trying to truck him, and he’s got a fair distance to go as a blocker (the knock on him pre-draft).
“It’s a process,” he said, smiling wryly. “We’re trying to speed up that process.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.