© Cary Edmondson | 2019 Dec 21
They finally got it done. The 49ers and George Kittle reset the tight end market on Thursday, agreeing to a five-year contract worth $75 million on Thursday, making Kittle the highest paid tight end of all time.
Perhaps most notable was the $30 million in guaranteed money, and $40 million guaranteed for injury. It’s not the type of deal the 49ers and cap guru Paraag Marathe typically do, rarely sacrificing flexibility to make players happy.
In this case they did, however, and The Athletic Editor-in-Chief Tim Kawakami explained why when he joined Tolbert, Krueger & Brooks on Friday.
“The 49ers don’t like guaranteeing a lot of money,” TK said on KNBR. “They don’t like having cash out of pocket. They like to go pay as you go, with big salaries but they can always cut you. That was Jimmy Garoppolo’s deal, that was the Colin Kaepernick deal, the Patrick Willis deal, Joe Staley. All of them have been similar, where the numbers look good, but every April they can get out of it if they want to. It’s very smart. It’s very Paraag Marathe.
“That was not what Kittle was gonna take. I think everyone kind of knew that, it was just kind of how is this going to be managed?
“It’s going to be basically $40 million which is a big number for a tight end. Unprecedented deal for a tight end, verging on a wide receiver (contract)…That’s why this took so long, it took them a long time to get to this point, but George Kittle is worth it.”
Kittle clearly is worth it, but why not DeForest Buckner? Put simply, there are other players like Buckner, there is no one else like Kittle.
“DeForest Buckner almost worth it, maybe worth it. But you had to say who’s worth the guaranteed money: George Kittle or DeForest Buckner? I love Buckner, think he’s an incredible player, an incredible leader, they might replace him with Javon Kinlaw. You can’t replace George Kittle, there’s no one to replace him with. So you pay him the $40 million guaranteed.
“They broke precedent. They could’ve been like ‘we don’t do this, we don’t do this, we don’t do this.’ They had to finally do it, and they did it for George Kittle.”
Listen to the full interview below.