Nothing is promised in the NFL.

That being said, 49ers tight end George Kittle knows how lucky he is to have spent so many seasons with a team in the Bay – but he also knows he deserves it. Because long-term home games are so hard to come by in the league, Kittle recently told teammate Deebo Samuel when he realized the 49ers were his.

“My sophomore year I had over 1,300 yards and a ton of touchdowns and I thought, 'Well, if I just play like that again, they'll reward me for playing the game the right way,'” Kittle said in Samuel's latest ” Cleats & Convos” podcast. “Because you can do all these things off the field, whatever it is, but everyone watches the tape. That’s all they respect.”

“And if you have good records and people respect you, someone will pay you a lot of money for it.”

The 49ers selected Kittle in the fifth round (No. 146 overall) of the 2017 NFL Draft and he caught 43 passes for 515 yards and two touchdowns in his rookie season. His breakthrough came in his sophomore season in 2018, when he had 88 receptions for 1,377 yards and five touchdowns.

After Kittle put together a nearly identical season in 2019, the 49ers rewarded him in the offseason with a lucrative five-year, $75 million contract extension in August 2020, making him the highest-paid tight end in NFL history at the time.

You could definitely say he was at home.

“I’m happy to be here in SF,” Kittle concluded.

Despite the uncertainty at quarterback during his first five and a half NFL seasons, Kittle now has some consistency under center in Brock Purdy, and the two have achieved much success together. The All-Pro tight end recorded his third 1,000-yard season last year in Purdy's first full season as the 49ers' starting quarterback and leads the 49ers in touchdowns this season.

While it remains to be seen what Kittle's next contract will be – he's set to become a free agent after the 2025 season – there's no denying that San Francisco is where the People's Tight End is supposed to be.

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