NFL-49ers' Kittle says sour taste from first loss will fuel team

Oct 27 : San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle said the team will carry the sting of their first loss of the season into their bye week, a mood he believes could help sharpen a battered roster that have built their identity around physical football.

The 49ers returned from Atlanta disappointed with their 29-20 loss to the Falcons on Sunday but encouraged by the prospect of getting several injured players back after the break, Kittle told Reuters in a Zoom interview on Monday.

"Losing is not fun," Kittle said. "But it is really hard to win in football. Everybody's a professional, everybody's talented."

But he said the defeat could give San Francisco a needed edge during the now 6-1 team's time away from the field.

"Instead of, 'Hey, we're going on this bye week, we're just going to go enjoy ourselves, forget about everything,' you're kind of sitting there angry for the entire week," Kittle said.

"And I think that'll be good for our football team."

MOUNTING INJURIES

The loss came as San Francisco have been hit hard by injuries, particularly at wide receiver. 

Kittle said the team had effectively lost all of their training-camp receivers, an unusual strain on an offense that has relied heavily on its remaining playmakers. Mike Evans and Deebo Samuel were among those who were unavailable on Sunday but expected to return in Week Nine. 

Still, the veteran tight end said the 49ers' depth — especially contributions from recent draft classes — has bolstered his confidence that the team can contend for a championship.

"We have young players who are out there making plays," Kittle said, pointing to rookies and younger players rotating along the defensive line and contributing elsewhere on defense.

"We don't have to win every game on the shoulders of Brock Purdy and Christian McCaffrey, or Nick Bosa and Fred Warner."

VIOLENT GAME 

The injuries, Kittle said, are partly an unavoidable consequence of how San Francisco play.

"We pride ourselves on playing a very violent game of football," he said. "When you turn on our tape, our whole offense, we're running off the ball, we're hitting people, we are blocking. Our defense is flying around, hitting people as hard as they possibly can."

That approach creates wear and tear over a long season, he said, but it is not something the 49ers intend to change.

"We sit on violence, and that's the way that we think football should be played," Kittle said. "I wouldn't change how we play because that's what makes us us."

Kittle pointed to the 2021 season as an example of a San Francisco team overcoming early injuries. The 49ers started that year 2-4 before winning eight straight games to reach the playoffs and advancing to the NFC Championship Game.

INJURY COMEBACK

This season has also presented a personal challenge for Kittle, who said he spent most of the close season recovering from an Achilles injury. Rather than his usual summer regimen of route-running and blocking work, he said his rehabilitation consisted largely of calf raises for months.

Kittle said he did not return to practice until shortly before the team's trip to Australia to open the season, leaving him little time to regain football conditioning before playing again.

"I definitely felt a lot of rust early on," he said. "But the more that I play, the more that I practice, the more I'm starting to feel like myself again."

He said he has felt closer to full football condition over the past two weeks.

"When something like that's taken away from you, it hurts," Kittle said. "But it also lights a fire in you every single day."

CANCER SCREENINGS

Away from the field, Kittle is working with Novartis on a prostate-cancer awareness campaign built around blood-test screening. Kittle said the partnership resonated because his grandfather had prostate cancer and survived it before later dying.

He said he was struck by learning that one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and that early detection can substantially improve outcomes.

"The point is to make it comfortable," Kittle said, adding that many men are reluctant to discuss screening. "You literally just go get a blood test. It's so much easier and it's not daunting."

For now, though, Kittle said the 49ers will take an unhappy break and use it as motivation for the stretch ahead.

"I'll be pretty grumpy," he said. "I know I'm a positive guy, but I get grumpy too sometimes."