49ers beat writer Matt Maiocco joined Murph & Mac on Thursday morning, and spoke about George Kittle’s incredible Sunday afternoon vs. the Broncos. Kittle hauled in seven passes for 210 yards, just four yards shy of the all-time single-game record for a tight end, set by Shannon Sharpe in 2002.
The performance established the second-year tight end as a bonafide star, and led Maiocco to compare Kittle to two great 49ers tight ends from years past.
“Brent Jones was savvy, he had those kind of loose hips that enabled him to shake free and he was smart to find the vulnerabilities of a defense,” Maiocco began. “Really good hands, fearless going over the middle. Vernon (Davis) was just athletic. Didn’t have the greatest hands in the world, was a body catcher but straight-line speed.
“Kittle seems to be a combination of both of them. He’s got the hips, he’s a good route runner, he seems to have a pretty good idea of defenses. Jeff Garcia writes a piece weekly for NBC Sports Bay Area, he compares Kittle with the ball in his hands to Terrell Owens. He said ‘he runs angry,’ and you can just tell when Terrell Owens caught a pass, he wasn’t happy unless he was crossing the goal line, and (Garcia) sees that same kind of relentless, daring-the-defense-to-bring-him-down attitude in George Kittle.”
Kittle’s performance put him over 1,000 yards on the season, the first time in 49ers history a tight end has surpassed that mark. Maiocco said John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan challenged Kittle this offseason, after an uneven, and injury plagued rookie year.
“There are guys during college or whatever, where you think they are made of the right stuff. But some of these guys view their first NFL paycheck as kind of the endgame, and they like the idea of being an NFL player more than they actually like being an NFL player, and putting in the work that it requires, and kind of suffering through the pain and just the commitment that it takes.
“George Kittle last year, he was plagued by injuries, he never really got a chance to show fully what he was capable of. After the season, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch they both challenged him, ‘Hey you need to take care of your body. You need to find a routine that works. It’s up to you from these months — Jan through July — to really focus in on that,’ and he did. He did a lot of work with flexibility. Some of the injuries he had last year were kind of bad luck injuries but he wanted to reduce the risk of injury by becoming more flexible, and being able to kind of bend in certain ways and not have those tendons or ligaments stressed.
“Today, John Lynch says he can walk through the 49ers’ facility and know exactly where George Kittle is going to be, depending on the day it is and the time of day it is. So he’s got a routine that has worked for him”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Maiocco on Kittle, start from the beginning.