49ers To Prioritize Extension For George Kittle

The 2019 NFL season is officially in the books. The 49ers just lost the Super Bowl in heartbreaking fashion, but they have to shake it off quickly and turn their attention to the offseason. Star tight end George Kittle is set to enter the final year of his rookie deal in 2020, and it sounds like San Francisco isn’t going to let him get anywhere close to free agency.

The 49ers are going to prioritize an extension for the Iowa product, and negotiations will begin “as soon as after the game,” sources told Mike Garafolo of NFL Network (Twitter video link). Garafolo thinks Kittle will “blow the lid off” the top of the tight end market, and that $13MM annually is the floor of what he can expect to get on his new contract. As Garafolo points out the current top of the market is around $9-10MM for guys like Travis Kelce, so it sounds like the market is truly going to be reset.

Given the numbers Kittle has put up during his brief time in the league, those figures aren’t shocking. A fifth-round pick in 2017, Kittle has performed well beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. In 2018 he set the single-season record for receiving yards by a tight end with 1,377, and he’s been an All-Pro in back to back years.

In addition to his receiving prowess he’s also one of the best blockers in the league, and he’s the engine of San Francisco’s NFC championship winning offense. As Garafolo’s NFL Network colleague Ian Rapoport pointed out in the same video, the 49ers have adopted an organizational philosophy of locking guys up early and rewarding their own, so it should only be a matter of time before Kittle gets paid. It should help the sting of the Super Bowl loss. The 26-year-old recently revealed that he’s been playing with a torn labrum, but that he doesn’t plan on getting surgery.