George Kittle, his 49ers teammates and the detailed focus of 2024 Tight End U (2024)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — George Kittle saw three of his fellow San Francisco 49ers tight ends being interviewed, so he scurried across Vanderbilt’s practice field Tuesday to join them before the session ended.

The 30-year-old tight end — fully healthy again after undergoing core muscle surgery this offseason — is an established superstar, but his 49ers position group is filled with new faces. So Kittle made sure to use this week’s Tight End University, the fourth installment of the summer convention that he founded alongside Travis Kelce and Greg Olsen in 2021, for bonding purposes.

Kittle wedged his way between fellow 30-year-old Eric Saubert and youngster Mason Pline, draping his arms around the shoulders of the veteran and the rookie. Logan Thomas, the 32-year-old veteran whom the 49ers signed earlier this month, rounded out the quartet.

“You know what’s really fun?” Kittle said. “I thought I was going to be the oldest one in the tight end room, but then we brought in another eight-year guy (Saubert), and then we brought in an 11-year guy (Thomas) and it’s fun to have vets in the room leading it. Because our next-oldest guy is a third-year guy (Jake Tonges), so to bring along a rookie (Pline) and two second-year guys (Cam Latu and Brayden Willis) and have them learn from guys who have played the game the right way, played at a high level — having a group of vets like that in the tight end room means a lot. It just means that there’s a lot of guys we can rely on.”

Tonges, Latu (who’s still finishing his rehab from knee surgery but is expected to be ready for next month’s training camp) and Willis didn’t attend this week’s Tight End U, but Saubert, Pline and Thomas used the summit to run drills, share ideas and generally sharpen their skills about a month before the 2024 season truly gets rolling. The 49ers must replace Charlie Woerner and Ross Dwelley — who both attended Tight End U but are now with the Atlanta Falcons — in the lineup alongside Kittle, setting up an interesting evolution at the position.

Perhaps Pline, who played three years of college basketball at Ferris State before switching to football in 2023 upon transferring to Furman, had the most to gain from the event’s crash course.

“There’s an abundance of information,” Pline said. “I’ve heard a lot of things in the meetings today I’ve been hearing for the first time, so I’m just taking as much in as I can, writing notes, just processing it as much as I can without overloading and throwing stuff away and forgetting stuff. I want to bring stuff from the classroom to the field.”

About 60 tight ends from around the league spent the morning in those meetings before running through two hours of drills in the Tennessee heat. Olsen, who’s worked as an NFL commentator at Fox since retiring after the 2020 season, was again the event’s lead instructor. Retired All-Pro tight end Dallas Clark, who wowed Tight End U attendees with a guest speech at the 2022 event, also returned to help run drills.

Greg Olsen… what a resource for all the talent at Tight End U. Here he is demonstrating with George Kittle pic.twitter.com/byt1tWPaZm

— David Lombardi (@LombardiHimself) June 18, 2024

This season’s installment featured an added influx of quarterback talent. The Dallas Cowboys’ Dak Prescott, the 49ers’ Brandon Allen and former NFL QBs Ryan Fitzpatrick and Matt Hasselbeck joined the Jacksonville Jaguars’ C.J. Beathard, a Nashville native and former teammate of Kittle’s who’s been a fixture at Tight End U since its inception.

Tight ends are increasingly becoming vital components of passing offenses around the league, and the growing quarterback presence reflected that. All guest quarterbacks spoke to the tight ends during a midsession huddle on the practice field, emphasizing the importance of detail-oriented rapport in the passing game.

“Quarterbacks develop scar tissue,” Fitzpatrick said. “If I’m expecting you to be open on the backside of a route, and three times in a row at practice, you get jammed at the line, you fall down, you end up breaking out when I think you’re breaking in, you’re not going to see the ball. You’re not going to even get the quarterback to look over there.”

Said Prescott: “Man-to-man, you should never be covered. Because you’re a mismatch. You’re bigger than any third-level guy and — even though I know the ’backers are getting faster — you’re usually faster than the second-level guys. You guys are a quarterback’s best friend. If you have a good tight end, you have a chance to have a great team.”

The QB emphasis of Tight End U reflects a general strategy the 49ers have taken at the position. Brian Fleury, a former college quarterback, has led the team’s tight ends room since 2022, part of coach Kyle Shanahan’s desire to ensure that instruction for the position develops as much synchronicity with quarterbacks as possible. Thomas, the 49ers’ most recent acquisition at tight end, actually was drafted as a quarterback out of Virginia Tech in 2014 before switching positions during his third season in the league.

“It’s definitely great to hear from the quarterbacks and what they see,” Thomas said. “Coming from that position, I got a little bit of a feel for it, but the big thing we took from the work today was timing. Be on their timing, be where they want us to be at that time. And when we’re there, we can be their best friend.”

Beneath its rough-and-tumble veneer, football is a game of intricate detail. The curriculum of Tight End U clearly focused on capturing that.

“It’s showing younger guys how to play the game the right way, with the right technique and the right mindset,” Kittle said. “There are a lot of guys who might not be Kelce, Olsen (or Rob Gronkowski). They are guys who are trying to make a living playing tight end. We’re helping give guys an opportunity to go out in training camp and make a roster, just get a foot in the door.”

There’s also a key element of offseason fun.

After checking into Tight End U at Nashville’s trendy Thompson Hotel on Monday, participants ambled up to their rooms carrying a full load of goodies. The event’s welcome package included a pair of cowboy boots, luggage and waterproof speakers. The opening party on the hotel’s rooftop came later Monday before participants were treated to a closing concert Tuesday. Following the practice itself, tight ends stuck around to play a round of games with local girls’ flag football players.

Kittle’s wife, Claire, helped incorporate that final segment of the afternoon.

“Seeing what these guys dreamt up four years ago and pulled off, and now we get to bring in young girls from Tennessee playing flag football, it’s really inspiring,” she said. “It’s something that wasn’t really a big thing for girls to do when I was a kid. The fact that there’s more of an emphasis now is just so awesome because all the life lessons that you can learn from football really can go into your life on an everyday basis.”

Meanwhile, George Kittle has enjoyed seeing his position’s stature grow, a development that coincides with his time in the league and the four years of Tight End U.

“The last 10 years, you’ve really noticed every Super Bowl team — you’ve realized, ‘Wow, there’s an elite tight end on that team that’s a focal point of the offense,'” Kittle said. “Now NFL teams are seeing that and you know almost every starting tight end, which is a huge step up from what it was 10 years ago.

“It’s a huge, meaningful thing to me. I love the tight end position. We’re standing on the shoulders of other tight ends that played before us. Hopefully, we get younger and younger guys to keep coming and eventually open this up to college guys, too.”

(Top photo of Eric Saubert, George Kittle, Mason Pline and Logan Thomas: David Lombardi / The Athletic)

David Lombardi is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the San Francisco 49ers. David joined The Athletic after three years with ESPN, where he primarily covered college football. Follow David on Twitter @LombardiHimself