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49ers TE George Kittle Explains How He has Improved in the Red Zone

Grant Cohn

Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) celebrates after scoring a touchdown against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the fourth quarter at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) celebrates after scoring a touchdown against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the fourth quarter at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
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SANTA CLARA -- George Kittle just keeps getting better.

He's 31, which means he should be on the downside of his career, but he's not. He's arguably having the best season of his career. He has 43 catches for 560 yards and 7 touchdowns. He leads the team in all those statistics. And that's because he has become the best red-zone weapon on the 49ers.

On Tuesday, I asked Kittle how he has improved in the red zone. Here's what he said.

ME: At the beginning of practice when you catch passes with your tight end coach draped all over you, are you simulating what you do in the red zone?

KITTLE: "Yeah. Usually during the special teams period, some guys don't do stuff which is totally fine, but my tight ends coach says, 'Hey, let's try to get something out of these 10 minutes.' Whether that's contested catches, over the shoulder for deep passes, back-shoulder passes, toe-touches on the sideline which somehow I've gotten a couple of those this year. Things that could happen in every single game. I just try to get as many reps of those as I can throughout the week."

ME: Do you think you're having the best season of your career?

KITTLE: "Yes and no. Honestly, my run tape hasn't been my favorite. I played pretty crappy against Dallas in the run game, so there's always things you can work on. I think the receiving stuff is doing really well. I'm getting a ton of targets in the red zone so the stats jump out at you. I do appreciate having 53 targets in eight games. The passing game is doing really well but could definitely play better, which is fun to know."

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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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