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The 49ers Should Extend George Kittle's Contract this Offseason

The 49ers have a dilemma.
Grant Cohn|
Nov 24, 2024; Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) rushes with the football after catching a pass during the second quarter against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images
Nov 24, 2024; Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) rushes with the football after catching a pass during the second quarter against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images | Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers have a dilemma.

The core of their roster is too old and too expensive. They need to cut some of these overpaid veterans and reload for the future.

Which brings us to George Kittle. Next year he'll be 32, he'll be in the final year of his contract and his salary cap number will be a grotesque $22.1 million. That's too much money for a tight end. The 49ers need to either restructure his contract by extending it, or they need to trade him.

Kittle is old for an NFL player, he misses a couple games every season and he always seems to be playing through an injury even though he always says he's healthy. He's a tough guy who doesn't use injuries as an excuse. But he's a physical player, and physical players tend to get injured.

Despite all of that, he's having arguably the best season of his career and he has been the best player on the 49ers in 2024. While the rest of the team licks its wounds from the Super Bowl defeat in February, Kittle has put that loss behind him and played inspired football every week for a team that's going nowhere. He has become the heart and soul of a team that's losing confidence. Without Kittle, the 49ers would crumble worse than they already have.

He has earned another multi-year extension with the 49ers. They can count on him him to maintain his standard of performance no matter what. He should retire with the 49ers if he chooses to.

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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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