Well that’s something. NFL Network’s Peter Schrager caught some heat for his first 2023 mock draft, so he’s hoping his follow-up is better received. Schrager is one of the better-connected national reporters, and after speaking with his sources around the league he settled on a new name for New Orleans Saints to monitor in the hours leading up to the draft: former Iowa Hawkeyes tight end Sam LaPorta.
“A player who has picked up a lot more juice and buzz of late,” Schrager wrote of LaPorta. “LaPorta and Luke Musgrave are two tight ends who could end up going near the end of the first round.”
LaPorta is the third tight end Schrager sees being picked in the first round, trailing Dalton Kincaid (Utah) to the Washington Commanders at No. 16 and Michael Mayer (Notre Dame) to the Los Angeles Chargers at No. 21. The 6-foot-3, 245 pounder has elite movement skills including a rare 4.59-second time in the 40-yard dash and impressive 6.91-second time in the three-cone drill, making for a 9.01 Relative AThletic Score.
He led the Hawkeyes in either receiving yards or receptions in each of the last three years while logging more than 1,000 snaps as a blocker, though he’ll need to put in work in the weight room to be an asset in that phase against NFL competition. It’s worth noting that his production was limited by the nation’s worst offense Iowa has run under nepotism-hire Brian Ferentz; on the rare occasions LaPorta was asked to run real routes and handle NFL-quality assignments, he excelled.
Unfortunately, that pullaway speed doesn’t show up often enough on game tape. He also wasn’t as effective on contested catches as you’d like him to be, dropping three times as many passes (14) as touchdown receptions (5). Like many tight ends coming out of school, LaPorta is still very much a work in progress. With Juwan Johnson locking down the receiving tight end role and Adam Trautman penciled in as the blocking specialist, it’s tough to see how LaPorta would get on the field as a rookie in New Orleans.
