What George Kittle heading to injured reserve means for 49ers’ offense, which relies heavily on star tight end

How will Kyle Shanahan and San Francisco adapt?

After George Kittle suffered a hamstring injury during Sunday’s season-opening win against the division-rival Seattle Seahawks, the San Francisco 49ers are placing the star tight end on injured reserve, which will him out of the lineup for at least the next four games.

It’s a massive blow to a Kyle Shanahan offense that suffered from significant injury issues all year long last season and took a step back as a result. Kittle’s importance to everything that the 49ers do offensively cannot be overstated.

How Kittle’s absence impacts 49ers’ offense

Kittle isn’t just a pass-game weapon. He is also the NFL’s best blocking tight end. Kittle plays a huge role in the 49ers’ run game, working with the other tight ends and fullback Kyle Juszczyk to lead the way for the Christian McCaffrey-led rush attack on both misdirection plays and straight-ahead calls. Because San Francisco’s offensive line beyond Trent Williams and Dominick Puni isn’t a strength, Kittle’s role in that aspect of the game is even more important.

But of course, Kittle is also an explosive weapon down the field. And the key word there is explosive. He’s not a particularly high-volume pass catcher (he runs fewer routes than most other top tight ends because the Niners have him block more often than other teams do with their tight ends, given that he’s such a good blocker), but he creates big gains at a rate significantly higher than just about every tight end in the league.

Over the past four years, Kittle is only 10th among tight ends in targets per route run, according to Tru Media, but he’s first — by a mile — in yards per route and target because he has the most explosive gains of 16-plus yards (87) of any player at the position and the highest explosive-play rate (23.9% of his targets).

Among tight ends with 100-plus catches during that time, only Jonnu Smith has averaged more yard after the catch per reception than Kittle, who is essentially a bowling ball on speed skates when making his way through the second and third level of the defense.

That, plus his ability to work up the seam and on deep crossing routes that Shanahan designs for him, is what makes Kittle such a threat to create a big gain.

San Francisco’s options at tight end after Kittle

Without Kittle, the 49ers might struggle to create those explosives, especially in the tight end room. The other tight ends on the roster are Jake Tonges and Luke Farrell.

Tonges made some nice plays on Sunday against the Seahawks (including the game-winning touchdown), but he’s also a 2021 undrafted free agent who had 47 catches for 620 yards in four years at Cal.

He’s likely not a significant receiving threat — or at least not a receiving threat close to being even in remotely the same neighborhood as Kittle. And Farrell has largely been used as a blocker throughout his career.

Without Kittle, who could step up for 49ers?

San Francisco’s next-best pass catchers are McCaffrey, Jauan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall. McCaffrey is a running back, and it’s difficult for running backs to create explosive gains through the air because most of their targets tend to come within a few yards of the line of scrimmage.

Jennings had a breakout year in 2024, but he’s still largely a possession receiver (he had a 56.6% receiving success rate but a 15.9% rate of explosives per target, far shy of where Kittle has been despite the fact that Kittle is a tight end — a position less likely to create explosive gains).

Pearsall has barely played so far in his career, but during his college career he did create explosive plays on 28.3% of his career targets, according to Tru Media.

He had more of those gains with each successive season, which is a good sign for the 49ers, and the average for receivers with 100-plus routes during a season in that span was around 16.5%. The issue was that he didn’t earn targets at a high rate, so those explosives were still pretty rare.

Still, he might be San Francisco’s next-best hope for creating big gains down the field, which is a necessary element for an offense. You can’t count on slowly matriculating the ball for scores on every single drive. It’s not sustainable to play offense that way.

The Niners might also just have to lean more on Shanahan’s play design than they’re used to, because the player who is arguably the key to the offense won’t be out there to make everything work the way it’s supposed to.