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Will the 49ers Extend George Kittle's Contract this Offseason?

Brock Purdy won't be the only player whose contract the 49ers probably will have to extend this offseason.

Grant Cohn

Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) prior to the game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) prior to the game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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Brock Purdy won't be the only player whose contract the 49ers probably will have to extend this offseason.

Like Purdy, George Kittle is entering the final season of his contract in 2025, and he has no guaranteed money left on it. And he just had one of the best seasons of his career and finally established himself as the undisputed No. 1 tight end in the NFL ahead of Travis Kelce. I'm thinking he's going to want to become the NFL's highest-paid tight end.

Which means the 49ers have an interesting choice. They can do nothing and risk Kittle holding out and potentially demanding a trade. They can trade him and lose the best tight end in franchise history in his prime, although Bill Walsh always said it was better to get rid of a player a year too soon rather than a year too late. Or the 49ers can extend Kittle's contract.

I'm guessing they will extend Kittle's contract.

The players just voted him the winner of the Eshmont Award which goes to the team MVP. And that's because he is their best player. And he's arguably the biggest mismatch in the passing game across the league. And he's still an elite blocker.

The 49ers arguably don't use Kittle enough. They've given him more than 100 targets in a season only twice and not once since 2019. Meanwhile, the Chiefs give Travis Kelce roughly 130 targets every season. Imagine how much money the 49ers would have to pay Kittle if they gave him the ball as much as they should.

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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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