George Kittles injury news, Andy Reids Hawaiian shirt and more from Super Bowl media night
San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle has caught his fair share of passes this season — 85 of them, with five of them going for touchdowns — but his true on-field joy is blocking a defender into irrelevance. It has gotten to the point where, as detailed by The Post’s Adam Kilgore in a Jan. 17 story, San Francisco Coach Kyle Shanahan draws up plays based on which opposing player Kittle wants to hit.
“The run plays he suggests are kind of half-thoughts,” Shanahan said. “They’re more to, how he can hit someone?”
So maybe the news that emerged from Super Bowl media night on Monday shouldn’t be all that surprising: Kittle has been playing with torn labrum, and not merely this season. He’s been playing with the shoulder injury for the past two seasons., and has no intention of getting surgery to repair it until after his career.
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“Does it look like it?” he said Monday, per USA Today’s Mike Jones. “It’s football. You play football. You just play injured. That’s how it is. A lot of it comes from my dad. He played for Hayden Fry University in the ‘80s. He used to tell me about the injuries he played with. One time he tore his ACL in Week 6 and then played in the Rose Bowl in Week 12. So, if he could do that, I can do anything."
Kittle followed in his father’s footsteps by playing college football at Iowa, becoming one of the best run-blocking tight ends in the country for a program that ran the ball a whole lot.
“So, I had that. And playing at Iowa for five years, it’s a mental toughness thing. Your best ability is availability and if you’re not on the field, they can’t use you and you don’t play. So, I try to play as much football as I can.”
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Kittle said he suffered the injury during the 2018 preseason, also dislocating his shoulder. But he had it popped back into place and plays with a brace, and over the past two seasons he has 2,430 receiving yards.
Media night whimsy
A quick look at some of the weirder moments from media night.
— Shanahan said he stopped playing the Madden video game series 10 years ago because he couldn’t handle the junk-talk from the kids.
“Once I realized I was getting killed by second graders, with them talking so much smack to me, I eventually retired,” he said.
— Chiefs Coach Andy Reid’s first taste of football fame came in 1971, when he competed as an overgrown 13-year-old in the NFL’s Punt Pass & Kick competition.
Naturally, someone came to media night dressed as 1971 Reid, with the misspelled name on the, just as it was in the TV graphic back then.
Reid, the 2020 version, was decked out in his now-trademark Hawaiian shirt.
— Kittle’s biggest critique of his quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo? His texting skills.
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“He is the worst texter of all time,” Kittle said. “I’m telling you, he leaves me on read all the time. I’ll be like: ‘Hey Jimmy, I got a question. Maybe on this play, should I run my route like this?’ No response. ‘Jimmy, you want to go to a movie?’ No response. And then the next day, he’s like, ‘Yeah, I got your text, I just didn’t respond.’ Thanks Jim, that’s awesome. So yeah, he’s a bad texter. Bad communication.”
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