In 2017, that George Kittle had an asterisk next to his name.<\/p>\n
At the time, coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch were looking closely at Iowa quarterback C.J. Beathard, whom they\u2019d later draft in the third round. Lynch recalled Shanahan stopping the film and pointing out another player, No. 46.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was skinny back then,\u201d Lynch said of Kittle. \u201cHe didn\u2019t weigh a lot. But he was just closing down one side of the line of scrimmage and could really uncoil. And Kyle would say, \u2018This is what it looks like. When you see a guy with this kind of forward lean.\u2019 \u2026 He goes, \u2018That\u2019s really intriguing. That\u2019s a skill.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem was that their scouts didn\u2019t have No. 46 ranked very highly, which was at least partly because of the feedback coming out of Iowa. The Hawkeyes ran a notoriously tight ship, and Kittle \u2026 well, Kittle was more like Jack Sparrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey called him a frat guy,\u201d Lynch said. \u201cThey said he liked to party, to have a good time. And apparently at Iowa, that wasn\u2019t a great thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t selling him,\u201d said then-49ers quarterbacks coach Rich Scangarello, who went to Iowa to work out Beathard and Kittle before the draft. \u201cThey weren\u2019t standing behind the guy. I think it takes just one person in the building to say something negative. Then all of a sudden, right or wrong, a narrative can form about an individual.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said LeVar Woods, who took over as Iowa\u2019s tight ends coach before Kittle\u2019s breakout junior season: \u201cI think maybe there were some people in the building at the time that weren\u2019t necessarily on George\u2019s side. And I feel like maybe some of the NFL people didn\u2019t talk to everybody involved with George, myself included.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woods, who now coaches at Michigan State, noted that Kittle arrived at Iowa with little fanfare. He was a 200-pound high school receiver with long arms and knobby knees, and no one knew where to put him. Was he a wide receiver? A tight end? At one point, the Hawkeyes tried him at outside linebacker, the position Woods was coaching when Kittle arrived. Woods didn\u2019t like the fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I would say this to George\u2019s face: I was not in support of that,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d only ever seen him go forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woods recalled Kittle making a splash as a redshirt freshman. He didn\u2019t appear in games and didn\u2019t travel with the team. So he put all of his energy \u2014 all of his creative energy \u2014 into his role on the scout team. Before the week of practice began, he\u2019d go to the arts and crafts store, stock up on tape and markers, and fashion his helmet and uniform to look like Iowa\u2019s opponent \u2014 all white with a red N when they played Nebraska, maize and blue for Michigan week and so on. Then he, Beathard and the other scout teamers would take it to the starters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had a blast with it,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n
When Woods took over the tight ends in 2015, Kittle was third on the offseason depth chart. An injury to a senior elevated him to a starting role, and he took advantage, finishing with a team-best six receiving touchdowns. His final season, however, was a bit of a letdown. A foot injury limited Kittle to 22 catches and four touchdowns, which was another factor in his middling draft stock \u2014 he didn\u2019t finish his college career with momentum.<\/p>\n
Still, the 49ers found his blocking too impressive to ignore. And when he ran a 4.52-second 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine, they began to dig deeper.<\/p>\n
They started with Beathard, someone they were certain had exemplary character. When they learned Beathard was not only close friends with Kittle but also his roommate, they started asking questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a wisdom about him,\u201d Lynch said of Beathard. \u201cHe\u2019s kind of country \u2014 a man of few words who said a lot when he did speak. And when we asked about George, it was, \u2018Oh man, love the guy. I think we underutilized him in the pass game. I think he can be a threat in the pass game. And we just didn\u2019t use him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n George Kittle finished his college career at Iowa with only 48 catches, but 10 went for touchdowns over his final two seasons. (Jeffrey Becker \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n The 49ers also sent Scangarello to Iowa City. His chief objective was to watch Beathard throw, but his side mission \u2014 get more insight into Kittle \u2014 became increasingly important.<\/p>\n \u201cI told C.J, \u2018I\u2019m coming down to work you out. George has to be there.\u2019\u201d Scangarello said.<\/p>\n There was one problem: The fun-loving tight end had just started his spring break. His last exam was on a Thursday, and the 49ers\u2019 workout was scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I gave him the most grueling workout,\u201d Scangarello said. \u201cI sent him on so many routes. \u2026 He was so hungover. And halfway through the drill, he went over to the garbage can and puked. And then he came right back to me and goes, \u2018Let\u2019s do more!\u2019 He just had this attitude. Like, \u2018I can go all day.\u2019 It was crazy. It was everything you want in a player (as far as) that killer instinct. It was one of the most impressive workouts I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Kittle has a slightly different recollection. He agrees the workout went well \u2014 \u201cI had two one-handed catches; I was playing absolutely out of my mind,\u201d he said \u2014 and doesn\u2019t deny that he celebrated his last exam in style.<\/p>\n \u201cI vividly remember that night,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a photo of it on my phone, actually. It was a fantastic night \u2014 had a great time.\u201d<\/p>\n But he said he initially wasn\u2019t supposed to be part of the workout. He\u2019d had sessions with two other NFL teams that week, and Beathard had other targets to help with his workout. It was only when two Iowa receivers bailed at the last minute that Beathard called Kittle \u2014 at 8 a.m. \u2014 and begged him to take part.<\/p>\n \u201cI would not have gone out the night before if I\u2019d known I had a workout,\u201d Kittle said. \u201cSo I sat in the hot tub and the ice tub for about an hour, drank about 12 Gatorades and went and had the workout of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the 49ers hosted Kittle at team headquarters for one of their 30 pre-draft visits. The visits include face time with the head coach and general manager and a\u00a0group outing to Topgolf<\/a>, something the 49ers did this week for the upcoming draft. The team likes to use its allotment of 30 visits on prospects it really likes or those with character questions \u2014 a broad, vague term<\/a> that could mean different things to different teams.<\/p>\n Kittle was a little of both, and the 49ers were glad they brought him in. One of the notes in Kittle\u2019s draft dossier was that \u201cbeing cool and funny is really important to him,\u201d which Iowa might have viewed as a negative. San Francisco didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cIt helped being around him,\u201d Lynch said. \u201cWe thought he had tremendous energy. He was funny. But that wasn\u2019t a bad thing. He was cool, kind of quirky. He wasn\u2019t afraid to talk to the GM and the head coach like a lot of guys are on their 30 visits. George had a comfort about him that was kind of refreshing. We thought his 30 visit was very positive. And so it was an avalanche of momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n After the visit, the 49ers gave Kittle a third-round draft grade.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we kept saying, \u2018The way (Iowa) talked about him, we don\u2019t think he\u2019s going until the fifth,\u2019\u201d Lynch said. \u201cSo we were hanging on.\u201d<\/p>\n San Francisco took Kittle at No. 146, the second pick in the fifth round and one spot after the Denver Broncos took Michigan tight end Jake Butt.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got him,\u201d Lynch said. \u201cIt was well worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n Woods noted that the same personality traits \u2014 the mischief, the mirth, the rowdiness \u2014 that ran counter to Iowa\u2019s rigid culture are celebrated in Kittle today.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s natural,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s not faking it. It\u2019s who he is. People gravitate to genuine people. And George is very genuine. And he makes you love him. It\u2019s hard not to like George Kittle. And to me, if you don\u2019t like George Kittle, that says more about you than it does George Kittle.\u201d<\/p>\n And, true to form, Kittle doesn\u2019t hold a grudge. He noted that he got to play with his cousin, Henry Krieger-Coble, for four years at Iowa and developed lifelong friendships with Beathard and others. He\u2019s taking five of them to WrestleMania this weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t really drink the Kool-Aid the way they wanted me to drink the Kool-Aid,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just Iowa. It\u2019s a lot of colleges. When you don\u2019t drink the Kool-Aid the way they want you to, they try to make life a little harder on you to see if you\u2019ll bail on it because they try to get people like that out of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the resilience he developed in Iowa City has served him well in the NFL.<\/p>\n \u201cCould it have probably been a little bit easier? Sure,\u201d Kittle said. \u201cBut that\u2019s college. And I honestly wouldn\u2019t trade it. Because the friendships I made back then and the experiences I had at the University of Iowa \u2014 I had a fantastic time. I bet you I had more fun than almost every NFL athlete in college.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the San Francisco 49ers ever need a reminder that \u201ccharacter\u201d concerns can get overblown leading up to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,7,6,1161,252,2624,2623],"class_list":{"0":"post-867632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-49ers","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","13":"tag-sanfrancisco","14":"tag-sanfrancisco49ers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116414065930895398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867632","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=867632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/USATSI_8826264-scaled.jpg\")
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