podcast<\/a> where he discussed his decision to join the 49ers:<\/p>\n\u201cFree agency was a little different this year. I felt like I was in a position to be a little bit more picky on where I wanted to go, at this point in my career. I think it just all depended on being in the right situation. And so, from the get-go, San Fran had interest\u2013there was a lot of interest there\u2013and it excited me just because I played in that division for four years. [Kyle] Shanahan has had that thing rolling for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
Familiarity played a key role, but Kirk has seen the opportunities the 49ers\u2019 wideouts have had firsthand, and that was something that he wanted to be a part of:<\/p>\n
\u201cJust being a skill guy, playing against those guys, and watching them really closely, you see what happens. There\u2019s just so much space when guys get the ball in their hands, the way he\u2019s able to scheme, different guys open, playing off the play-action pass, run game, screens, the whole nine. It\u2019s just about integrating yourself in that, and he does a great job of using guys to their skill set, so I\u2019m really excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirk goes from an offense that struggled to consistently create space for its skill players to one of the best in the league at doing so. It also helps that Kirk has respect for the veterans in the 49ers locker room:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so, playing against all those guys, a lot of respect for that organization. And so, the more I started thinking about it, I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s a great fit.\u2019 And I feel like I fit into that locker room really well, and want to be a part of what they are doing. I had some other options out there. I was just kind of taking my time and just really doing my due diligence. It was really a no-brainer at the end of the day. So, super excited to be a part of the 49ers, and I get to be back on the West Coast, closer to home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirk grew up and went to high school in Scottsdale, Arizona. He\u2019s a two-hour flight away from home. On the field, he\u2019ll add a much-needed speed element to a 49ers receiving core that struggled mightily to generate explosives without Ricky Pearsall on the field a season ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier in the week, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said he\u2019s been a \u201chuge fan\u201d of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[375,304,7,12059,221,253,2368,2812,7502,249,6,2392,252,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-851456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-christian-kirk","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-foxborough","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-houston-texans","14":"tag-houstontexans","15":"tag-kyle-shanahan","16":"tag-massachusetts","17":"tag-new-england-patriots","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-ricky-pearsall","20":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","21":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}