Dolphins-49ers: A Tale of Two Tight Ends

The Miami Dolphins will be hoping to get tight end Mike Gesicki back on track against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, while at the same time trying to control one of the very best at the position — if not the best.

George Kittle made his return to the lineup against the Philadelphia Eagles last Sunday night and was borderline spectacular while catching 15 passes (on 15 targets) for 183 yards in the 49ers' 25-20 loss.

Kittle, who was an All-Pro selection in 2019 and a Pro Bowl selection each of the past two years before becoming the highest-paid tight end in the NFL in August, had missed the previous two games because of a knee injury.

“It’s a huge challenge," safety Eric Rowe said. "He’s one of the, if not the best, tight ends right now in the league. Obviously as we can see, they target him a lot each game. So obviously he’s going to be a big challenge for us this week. What makes him good is he’s not just a receiving tight end. He blocks. So he’ll get in and he’ll block the nine or block the linebacker and not on some like, ‘Oh, I really don’t want to hit you.’ So really he can play both ways, so we’ve definitely got our hands full this week.”

Defensive coordinator Josh Boyer's biggest challenge this week very well could be trying to come up with a plan to slow down the former fifth-round pick from the University of Iowa.

"I think they do a very good job with their scheme," Boyer said. "They’ll move him around. They’ll use him in multiple facets. They’ll hand speed sweeps to him. He’ll be a focal point in the passing game. He’s a guy that we’ll obviously need to know and most everybody will need to know where he is and what our plan is on how to handle it, and I don’t think it’s just one way that you do it. Obviously he’s a really good player and I know he’s had the injury, but he didn’t miss a beat last week"

On the other side of the ball, offensive coordinator Chan Gailey has a tight end issue of his own.

After Mike Gesicki had a career game in Week 2 with eight catches for 130 yards and a touchdown against Buffalo, he's got two catches on six targets in the last two games combined.

For an offense that's not overloaded with playmakers, the Dolphins need to get Gesicki going again.

"They have covered him a lot tighter and have been a lot more — I mean, wouldn’t you after he had 130 yards or whatever it was?" Gailey said. "That’s what they are doing. The question about forcing the ball, if it’s double-covered, you don’t want to force it. If it’s single coverage and he’s one-on-one but it’s tight coverage, you can afford to throw a ball in there at times and give the guy a chance to make a play.

"A few times it’s looked like they were double-covering him and they ended up single-covering him, but to the quarterback on his first look, it looked double covered, so ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) got off of him. We just have to pay closer attention to how they are actually playing him during the course of the game. I think hopefully now that we’ve put the ball in other places, things will start to come back his way.”

The past two weeks marked the first time since the end of the 2018 season that Gesicki went back-to-back games with only one catch. And the three targets each of the past two weeks represented his lowest total since the October 2019 Monday night game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

One would expect the Dolphins to look in Gesicki's direction quite a bit against the 49ers. And you know the 49ers will be looking for Kittle regardless of which of their quarterbacks ends up playing.

This isn't a Kittle-vs.-Gesicki battle, but what happens with those two players absolutely could play a big role in the outcome.

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