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The Final Grade For the 2021 49ers Tight Ends

The 49ers underused their tight ends in 2021.
Grant Cohn|
The Final Grade For the 2021 49ers Tight Ends
The Final Grade For the 2021 49ers Tight Ends

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San Francisco 49ers

George Kittle still is one of the best tight ends in the NFL, but 2021 was a down season for him.

He failed to reach 1,000 receiving yards despite playing in 14 regular season games, his blocking took a step back and he was injured the entire season. He hurt his calf Week 1, when on the Injured Reserve List for two weeks and returned for the rest of the season, but never seemed 100 percent healthy.

During the 49ers' final six games of the season (including the playoffs), he averaged just 26.3 receiving yards per game -- a lower average during that critical span than Deebo Samuel (78.5 receiving yards per game), Brandon Aiyuk (62.7 receiving yards per game) and Jauan Jennings (30.2 receiving yards per game).

Which means Kittle was the fourth-option in the 49ers passing game when the seasons concluded. Highly strange.

Kittle still is capable of playing at an A-plus level when healthy, which hasn't been often the past two seasons. He injured himself Week 1 each of the past two years. It's possible his body is beginning to break down. He'll be 29 next season.

His understudies are quality backups who don't play as much as they should. Charlie Woerner is a good run blocker who improved tremendously from Year 1 of his career to Year 2. He's not much of a route runner, but he is difficult to tackle in the open field because he's so strong.

And then there's Ross Dwelley, an excellent route runner who has some of the best hand-eye coordination of all the tight ends in the NFL, but the 49ers rarely throw him the ball. This season they threw him five passes. He caught four for 51 yards and a touchdown. 

The 49ers underused their tight ends in 2021.

FINAL GRADE: A-MINUS

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

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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