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Were the 49ers Smart to Restructure George Kittle's Contract?

Kittle's cap hit for 2024 was scheduled to be north of $20 million, and now it will be roughly $9.5 million.

Grant Cohn

Were the 49ers Smart to Restructure George Kittle's Contract?
Were the 49ers Smart to Restructure George Kittle's Contract? /
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The 49ers just made George Kittle much more affordable for now, and much more difficult to release in the future.

For the second offseason in a row, the 49ers have restructured Kittle's contract, according to ESPN's Field Yates. Kittle's cap hit for 2024 was scheduled to be north of $20 million, and now it will be roughly $9.5 million. So the 49ers just created lots of cap space and made Kittle's price tag much more reasonable.

But next year, Kittle will be extremely expensive once again -- his cap hit will be nearly $20 million. And it will be the final year of his contract. And he will be 31. And if they want to cut him, they'll create only $3 million in cap space.

The 49ers just put themselves in this position with Arik Armstead. Last year, they restructured his contract just before the season started and created almost $12 million in cap space which they never used. Then this offseason, Armstead was extremely expensive and in the final season of his contract, so the 49ers asked him to take a pay cut, he refused and they had no choice but to release him.

Could that scenario play out with Kittle next year?

He's a month older than Armstead, and he's not getting better. In the Super Bowl last month, he had just two catches for four yards -- he never has been a big playoff performer. It's possible the 49ers will decide they can't justify paying more than $19 million for a tight end who's declining and they'll have no choice but to release him and eat the dead cap space.

History often repeats itself.

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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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