The 49ers’ George Kittle signed a record deal. Why the team nearly missed out on him
All the good that came from drafting George Kittle almost never happened for the 49ers.
Coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch, running their first draft with San Francisco in 2017, placed a third-round grade on the little-known blocking tight end from Iowa. They liked his athleticism and thought he would be better in the passing game than his paltry statistics indicated. Kittle never had more than 22 catches in a season with the Hawkeyes.
But the 49ers had more glaring needs at other positions, Shanahan and Lynch decided. So in Round 3 they drafted cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon and took Kittle’s teammate, quarterback C.J. Beathard, 42 slots before Kittle came off the board.
Shanahan even liked Utah running back Joe Williams enough to grab him in the fourth round despite concerns about his commitment to football. Those wound up being validated. Williams never played in a game before getting released a year later.
It all speaks to how much Kittle was sliding under the radar not only for the 49ers, but the entire league.
“We thought he’d be gone, so we were going to go a different direction in the fifth round,” Shanahan said Thursday morning on KNBR soon after news broke of Kittle’s record-breaking five-year, $75 million extension through 2025.
“We all loved the guy,” Shanahan continued. “And when he was sitting there in the fifth, even though we thought to go different directions, we couldn’t pass up on him because we saw him as a third-round prospect and we felt so lucky to get him in fifth. And now I look back, he’s a top-10 prospect that we got in the fifth. It was a hell of a deal.”
Hindsight says Kittle is one of the best players in the league, at any position, and should have gone in the first round. He’s arguably the 49ers best player, and certainly better than Solomon Thomas, the defensive lineman San Francisco took No. 3 overall in the same draft, and linebacker Reuben Foster, taken 31st, who was released before the end of his second season due to off-the-field issues.
Kittle is coming off a first-team All-Pro season as a focal point of an offense that reached the Super Bowl. He had a signature moment when he carried three New Orleans Saints defenders, while getting his face mask yanked, to set up a game-winning field goal that proved to be massive for playoff seeding.
“It’s weird,” said Shanahan, “because we were definitely fortunate. It’s not like we really saw something that no one else saw. It wasn’t hard to see. The guy was extremely physical, he was strong, everyone called him a blocker because if you looked on a computer and read his stats … he doesn’t look like somebody who can do anything in the pass game. And then he’s so good at blocking that people just label him that (a blocking tight end).”
Kittle’s deal drastically reshapes the market for his position. His $15 million average annual salary dwarfs the previous high of $10.5 million for Austin Hooper over the next four seasons with the Cleveland Browns. Kittle will receiver $30 million in guarantees at signing, according to an NBC Sports Bay Area report. Hooper received $23 million.
Kittle’s deal also appears to have served as a bullet point for Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs, who agreed to a four-year, $57 million extension ($14.25 million per season) that came down later in the day, making Thursday a landmark day for the position.
There’s some debate about which player is better. Kelce is more known for his work as a pass catcher while Kittle is viewed as more well rounded and a better blocker.
Kittle’s 2,945 yards are the most by a tight end in league history over his first three seasons, beating Mike Ditka and Rob Gronkowski. He forced the most missed tackles (20) after the catch last season, according to Pro Football Focus. And per Next Gen Stats, the 49ers rushed for 5.0 yards with Kittle on the field versus 3.5 when he wasn’t.
Said Shanahan: “When you have a guy like George who is different and is special, it’s not about just being the best tight end in the NFL. It’s who he is after that, that to me makes me want to get this stuff done when you might not actually have to right now.”
Kittle has been known for his offseason workout regimen and has come into training camp in better shape the season before. This offseason, Kittle set personal records in bench press and front squat despite the pandemic that closed down training facilities throughout the country. Kittle, of course, was able to build out his own personal gym in his garage.
“The way the guy takes care of himself, the way he works year round to put his body in a position to stay healthy with the way he plays, it makes you believe in the guy,” Shanahan said, “it makes you believe in now only what he has done but what he’s going to do. When you have a guy like that, I think it makes it a lot easier for the owner to commit to him like that.”
And to think, eight tight ends were drafted ahead of Kittle in 2017.
