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San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle is only 31 years old and coming off a second consecutive season in which he had over 1,000 receiving yards, but it may soon be time for the Niners to begin thinking about finding his successor. It’s not as if Kittle fallen off a cliff or even showing clear signs of regression. But with a physical, high usage tight end such as Kittle, it’s reasonable to believe that the ledge of that cliff is at least within shouting distance.
The most likely route that the 49ers will take to find the player who will occupy Kittle’s role within Kyle Shanahan’s offense is via the 2025 NFL Draft, where San Francisco owns the 11th overall pick. The Niners could find themselves in a position where a duo of intriguing choices — Penn State’s Tyler Warren, who finished 10th in the Heisman Trophy voting, and Michigan’s Colston Loveland, who finished with 56 receptions for 582 yards in Michigan’s run-heavy offense — sit near the top of their draft board.
NFL Draft expert Daniel Jeremiah believes that both Warren and Loveland could be options, with Warren being the clear front-runner assuming that he’s available when San Francisco is on the clock.
“Tyler Warren is my fifth overall player because his mixture of just size, physicality,” Jeremiah said during a midweek conference call, per Jennifer Lee Chan of NBC Sports Bay Area. “He just walls guys off. He looks like a billboard rolling down the seam. He’s enormous. He has a huge catch radius. He is so physical and tough with the ball in his hands after the catch. They use him on the wildcat stuff and use him as a runner and do those different things because he’s a really hard guy to get on the ground.”
Colston Loveland may not be the do-everything physical specimen that Warren projects to be, but even still, his ceiling coming into the league is considered by many to be one of the better pass-catching tight ends in the NFL in due time.
The other option here is that 49ers forego the opportunity to take one of these top two tight ends in the 1st Round and instead opt to set their sights on a high upside two day or day three options such as Harold Fannin (Bowling Green), Elijah Arroyo (Miami FL), Oronde Gadsden II (Syracuse), or Luke Lachey (Iowa) who shares an Alma Mater with a handful of successful current and former tight ends like Sam LaPorta, T.J. Hockenson, Noah Fant, Dallas Clark, and yes, George Kittle.
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