Welcome back, Puka Nacua!

Nacua only played a part-time role, and still, he led the Rams in first-read targets and doubled up the next-closest Rams in terms of receiving yardage! As a route runner at the point of the catch and as a ball carrier after the catch, Nacua looked dominant. It felt so good to see him healthy.

Where do Nacua and Kupp sit in rest of season rankings after getting both back in the fold in Week 8? Those are the types of answers we are here to consider today. But first, I have to point you to the Beyond the Box Score episode that I just recorded. It's so freaking good.

Week 8 Beyond the Box Score episode:

Guest -- Nate Tice of Yahoo Fantasy

Nate was so fun to talk ball with. If you're a longtime reader, you may remember me mentioning that I listened to a podcast that he recorded with Matt Harmon detailing NFL run games at least five times. I bring that example up to illustrate just how much there is to learn from his experience and knowledge of the game of football. The Beyond the Box Score episode is dense and packed full of nuggets; even if you don't have the time this week, I would absolutely make sure to bookmark it and not forget about it. A lot of the information is evergreen.

Alrighty, let's refocus. So much has shifted just in one week since the last rest-of-season rankings set that I provided!

As we discussed Sam LaPorta on Monday's Beyond the Box Score episode, Dan asked if we thought LaPorta was healthy. I just watched all of his targets and felt like LaPorta seemed to have the same athleticism as in his breakout rookie season. I watched 20-30 targets scattered across early, mid, and late-season games from 2023 to compare. He looks the same to me. For what it's worth, LaPorta avoided tackles at a higher rate in 2023 than he currently is in 2024. His sample size this season is so small, though! He's never getting the ball!

You can watch LaPorta's 2024 targets here!

Another problem is that LaPorta's not being used as a route runner quite as often as in 2024. Below, you'll find the Week 7 TE leaderboard for "route participation," the percentage of each offense's dropbacks that a player ran a route on.

This is nothing new for LaPorta in 2024. He is the TE17 on the year with a 66% rate. His rate has been as high as 82% but has only been above 70% in two games. As a rookie, LaPorta was above 70% in 12 of 16 games (excluding Week 18), including a seven-game stretch to end the season with an average route rate of 77% with just one game (69.4%) below 70%.

The Lions just have not seemed to make any effort to incorporate LaPorta in the offense. He's just there. Over one-fourth of his routes (26%) have been hitches. That's up from 18% last year. His slant, out, and crosser route rates are all down. We've seen Jameson Williams be used much more on horizontally-breaking routes in 2024, and I don't think it's any coincidence that his first-read target rate has spiked as a result.

It'll be interesting to see what Detroit does during Williams' two-game suspension. We could see some more nuance added to LaPorta's route tree, or maybe Kalif Raymond will simply pick up more of those horizontally-breaking routes.

You'll see below that LaPorta still ranks as the TE7 in my rest of season rankings. Even though his role is frustrating, he's too good to give up on. He plays in a Fantasy football print shop of an offense; it really doesn't get any better than Ben Johnson's Detroit Lions for Fantasy purposes. If the target distribution evens out a bit, LaPorta could approach top-five Fantasy TE viability again. If not, he's a touchdown-or-bust play like Mark Andrews.

I'm not interested in trading for LaPorta in season-long formats unless he's extremely cheap. But where I roster him, I'm simply holding. I'm not dropping unless it's a very shallow league. And I'm not selling low. We suffer.

("ECR" = expert consensus rank. These images show my rankings and how they compare to consensus, courtesy of FantasyPros)

("ECR" = expert consensus rank. These images show my rankings and how they compare to consensus, courtesy of FantasyPros)

("ECR" = expert consensus rank. These images show my rankings and how they compare to consensus, courtesy of FantasyPros)

If you have any feedback on the newsletter, feel free to send them my way. Thank you for reading! And please, do check out Beyond the Boxscore on FFT! Dan and I put a lot of work into that podcast project and aim to make it fun and accessible for any level of NFL fan!