Kittle has been with the 49ers for eight seasons and made six Pro Bowls. / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Still cleaning up in the aftermath of the NFL draft, here are my Tuesday notes …
• The San Francisco 49ers’ four-year, $76.4 million deal with George Kittle, on paper, makes him the NFL’s highest-paid tight end—and that’s well-deserved. The exact number wasn’t done without intent. It puts Kittle at $19.1 million per year, which just edges out the $19 million per that the Arizona Cardinals gave their star tight end, Trey McBride, earlier this offseason.
The new deal gives Kittle a little bump over his current $15 million APY (he has one year and $15 million left on the deal he signed in 2020) over the next two years, and assures him that he’ll be on the team this year and next. For the Niners, with ’26 fully guaranteed on the contract, it means committing to their 31-year-old star who will turn 32 in October for one more year past the current one, with three team options after that.
That, as I see it, is the sort of agreement, one first reported by the fellas at Bussin’ With The Boys, that works for everyone.
• Tennessee Titans coach Brian Callahan wants Cam Ward to go through the process of becoming the starting quarterback, so he’s not going to bestow that upon him right away.
But the preparations have begun to prepare Ward. To get ready, Callahan went back and watched the tape from Joe Burrow’s rookie year again—he was the Cincinnati Bengals’ offensive coordinator then—and also Washington Commanders QB Jayden Daniels’s 2024 to dig into the weeds and build the best blueprint for Ward’s rookie season.
The expectation is that Ward will take the first snap of OTAs in May, and I’d expect that the Titans will give him all the work you’d normally give the starter from that point forward.
• While we’re on the Titans, they’ve hired Cleveland Browns director of player personnel Dan Saganey to be their new vice president of player personnel. Saganey has spent all 16 of his NFL seasons in Cleveland—he initially came in under Eric Mangini and George Kokonis (and obviously has seen a lot of things since). Saganey also worked with Tennessee GM Mike Borgonzi’s brother Dave, now the Dallas Cowboys’ linebackers coach, at Harvard back in the day.
Big picture: This is another piece of the reimagining of the Titans’ front office. The top four guys in personnel going forward—Borgonzi, assistant GM Dave Ziegler, VP/football advisor Reggie McKenzie and now Saganey—have arrived within the past three months.
President of football operations Chad Brinker was charged, when he was promoted, with modernizing the operation in Nashville. That process is full speed ahead.
• One interesting thing to consider about the Browns’ quarterback room, as Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders enter it, is how they have Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett on level ground.
Flacco’s contract has $4 million in base pay, $3 million of which is fully guaranteed. Pickett has $2.623 million in base pay for this year, the final year of his rookie contract, and all of it is fully guaranteed. Which means that the cost for Cleveland to walk away from either player at the end of camp is virtually equal—and puts the two in competition not just for the starting job, but a job, period.
It’ll also be interesting to see how the reps are divvied up in the spring and summer, with the rookies, of course, needing reps and to be assessed.
• Logistically, I think you could argue the New Orleans Saints turned their offensive line from a question mark into a likely strength. And they would tell you, I think, that Kelvin Banks Jr.’s position flexibility gives them a great chance to get there.
Right now, I’d say just two guys are locked into a spot. Erik McCoy is the center. Cesar Ruiz is the right guard. Banks, as the Saints see it, could be the left tackle, right tackle or left guard. Last year’s first-rounder, Taliese Fuaga, could play either tackle spot, too. I’d bet those two will be starters. So that’s four, and it leaves Trevor Penning, Dillon Radunz and Nick Saldiveri to compete for the fifth spot.
Right now, I’d guess it’ll be Penning, but that could be either at tackle or guard. Radunz and Saldiveri are guards by trade. Either way, Banks’s physical ability to play all those spots gives the team the shot to put the best five out there in September. And I really like that about the pick at No. 9 (made even with a defensive player they liked, in Georgia’s Mykel Williams, on the board).
• The Minnesota Vikings’ determination to fix their interior, both on offense and defense, has been pretty clear this offseason. They signed center Ryan Kelly and guard Will Fries away from the Indianapolis Colts, and picked up defensive tackle Jonathan Allen when the Washington Commanders let him go.
There was word before the draft (that we passed along) that the Vikings would double down on the work they’d already done, and they did that emphatically. Ohio State G Donovan Jackson was the pick at No. 24, and the Vikings had also eyed Alabama’s Tyler Booker, who went No. 12 to the Dallas Cowboys. And with their third pick, in the fifth round, Minnesota tabbed a rugged edge/tackle hybrid, in Georgia’s Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, for its defensive front.
• I wouldn’t sleep on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ draft class. Were it not for some medical concerns, Oregon DT Derrick Harmon might have been a top-10 pick. And Iowa RB Kaleb Johnson and Ohio State DE Jack Sawyer, drafted in the third and fourth rounds, respectively, both went a round later than a lot of teams had them. All three should have a shot to play roles right away.
Also, just in terms of story lines, it was cool to see Pittsburgh take the son of ex-Steeler Mark Bruener, Washington LB Carson Bruener, in the seventh round.
• One thing I’m pretty impressed with is how Washington GM Adam Peters has stocked premium positions over his 15 months in charge. He’s added Deebo Samuel to Terry McLaurin at receiver. He has Laremy Tunsil and first-round pick Josh Conerly Jr. to play tackle. He’s landed Marshon Lattimore, Mike Sainristil and second-rounder Trey Amos at corner. And, of course, Jayden Daniels at quarterback. His next job, over the next year or two, will be to find long-term edge rushers. But this is a lot of work done in one year.
• Sometimes, teams dive deep into a certain position and it does indeed wind up being a tell on where they’re going. Along those lines, I heard in the weeks leading up to the draft that the Miami Dolphins were all over the defensive tackles. I even got a heads up that GM Chris Grier was in Ann Arbor in the fall to live scout the Michigan-Oregon game, which featured three of this year’s five first-round defensive tackles. Sure enough, the Dolphins took DTs—Michigan’s Kenneth Grant and Maryland’s Jordan Phillips—with two of their first five picks.
• The deadline for picking up fifth-year options on the 2022 draft class is Thursday. Some of those decisions (i.e., Aidan Hutchinson, Garrett Wilson and Charles Cross) are easy. Some (Los Angeles Chargers guard Zion Johnson) are harder.
