All 49ers

George Kittle Agrees to Contract Extension with 49ers

Sports Illustrated's All49ers broke the story.

Grant Cohn

On Wednesday, hours before any outlet reported any updates about George Kittle's contract extension with the San Francisco 49ers, Sports Illustrated's All49ers reported the 49ers would announce a contract extension for Kittle on Friday.

Hours later, reports came out that Kittle and the 49ers were "making progress" toward an extension.

And Thursday morning, Mike Silver and Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network learned the particulars of the deal: It’s a five-year deal worth $15 million per season, with $30 million guaranteed and a $18 million signing bonus.

The 49ers have not yet officially announced the deal, so stay tuned for that.

My source said it would be a six-year deal worth $15.8 million per season -- awfully close. The source also said 50 percent of Kittle’s deal would be guaranteed, but only 40 percent of it is. And the source said the signing bonus would be $25 million.

So my source’s numbers were slightly off, but not by much.

Here's what the source texted me Thursday morning: "Agent was worried about incentives and at the last minute changed to a five-year deal."

This is an extremely good deal for the 49ers, and not the best deal for Kittle. He should have pushed for more guaranteed money. He got less guaranteed than Arik Armstead, who isn’t even guaranteed to be a good player next year -- he’s had one good season in his entire career. Kittle has always been good and will continue to be good for quite some time. His agent, Jack Bechta, could have done better.

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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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