IT'S GOOD TO BE GEORGE

Kittle headed for record payday … but when?

- Craig Massei

He has gone where no tight end in NFL history ever has gone before him, and he’s done it in his own inimitable, flamboyant, swashbuckling and electric style, aggressively slamming into opposing defenders both with and without the football, but doing it with the panache that suggests a certain elegance and flair despite the basic rawness of the sport he plays for a living.

George Kittle does it his way.

And only one way.

He’s as all-out and all-in of a professional football player as you will ever see, but it isn’t just Kittle’s driving work ethic and commitment to excellence that sets him apart from the NFL average.

No, Kittle is something extra and beyond. After just three seasons with the 49ers, he has developed into a special kind of talent.

“Right now, there is not comp for George,” Jack Bechta, Kittle’s agent, said recently on NBC Sports Bay Area’s 49ers Insider Podcast. “He’s unique. He’s a unicorn. He’s one of a kind.”

Unicorns aren’t real, but Kittle sure is, and Bechta’s inference is both obvious and understandable. Just like the definition of the unicorn, Kittle is “something that is highly desirable but difficult to find or obtain.”

Kittle runs routes and catches passes like a wide receiver, but he mixes it up in the trenches like an offensive lineman with his powerful blocking.

Both characteristics have made Kittle indispensable to a San Francisco offense that climbed from 16th in the NFL in total offense in 2018 to fourth in the league in that department last season with Kittle leading the charge as the unit’s shining star and top playmaker.