Report: George Kittle Signs 4-Year, $76.4 Million Extension with 49ers

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The 49ers are taking care of business early this offseason. Or at least early for their standards.
They just signed future Hall of Fame tight end George Kittle to a four-year, $76.4 million contract extension according to reports. This deal makes him the highest-paid tight end in the league, as he should be. And they signed him in April before he missed a single practice, voluntary or not. Good for the 49ers and good for Kittle.
Last year, the 49ers took all offseason to extend Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams. As a result, they held out, training camp was a joke and the 49ers had a down season. Afterward, they acknowledged that the holdouts affected their preparation. So it's good to see them avoid another awkward holdout.
It seems like Kittle and the 49ers struck a compromise. According to The Athletic's Dianna Russini, not only did Kittle want to be the highest-paid tight end in the NFL, he wanted to get paid $20 million per season. That "2" seemed important to him, but he caved and accepted slightly less.
All the terms of Kittle's deal have not yet been released, but we know he has $35 million guaranteed at signing and $40 million in total guarantees. So essentially, it sounds like the first two years of the deal are assured and the final two years might not be. We'll find out soon enough.
The next big extension the 49ers will hand out most likely will go to Brock Purdy, who wants at least $50 million per season. Let's see if he'll take slightly less than he's asking for like Kittle did.
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Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.
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