When 49ers tight end George Kittle last faced the Cardinals, the game didn’t start well for him.
Kittle’s knee smashed against Arizona defensive end Chandler Jones’ helmet on the first play. It looked painful. The resulting injury would keep Kittle out for the 49ers’ next two games.
But Kittle was able to play through the injury in the immediate aftermath of that collision. He re-entered the game later in the first quarter, only to be knocked down twice on run-blocking assignments by the Cardinals’ Budda Baker. Rounds 1 and 2 had gone to the fiery Arizona safety.
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But at the snap of a finger, Kittle turned the tables.
On a key third down, he lined up in the slot against Baker. Kittle jabbed to the right off the line, goading Baker to the outside. Then Kittle cut violently inward, leaving the much smaller Baker in the dust.
The slant pass from 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was on target, and Kittle rumbled 30 yards for a score. He earned a second win over Baker on the play, tossing the safety away with a violent stiff-arm in the open field:
George Kittle: UNSTOPPABLE 😱 @gkittle46 | #GoNiners
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How to watch: https://t.co/I6INVckndX pic.twitter.com/RL3TnEyqMz— NFL (@NFL) November 1, 2019
A TV camera found Kittle immediately after, while he was still breathing heavily on the 49ers’ bench.
“I’m still here, Budda!” Kittle barked in Baker’s direction.
It was an intense sequence. Minutes after looking seriously hurt and then ineffective, Kittle had very suddenly put Baker on the wrong end of a highlight reel and punctuated his resurrection with all that yelling.
“I was just reminding him that football is a long game,” Kittle said of his shout toward Baker on a Zoom media call Thursday. “There’s 60-70 plays and I’m going to be here all night. That’s just kind of my mindset: You may get me once or twice. I think Marshawn Lynch said that: ‘Just don’t get got more than I get you.'”
That sequence happened on Halloween night of 2019. It was the blossoming of a compelling one-on-one matchup, a collision course set into motion when Kittle and Baker both entered the NFC West as rookies in 2017. The two players have established themselves as All-Pros and two-time Pro Bowlers since. They each signed record contracts about three weeks apart this offseason, and Kittle and Baker are now the highest-paid players in NFL history at their respective positions.
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The pairing will undoubtedly be a central component of Sunday’s season opener, when the Cardinals visit the 49ers at Levi’s Stadium.
There’s a chance that Arizona may also use its 2020 first-round draft pick Isaiah Simmons, a 6-foot-4 prodigy who played linebacker, defensive end, cornerback and safety while in college at Clemson, to cover Kittle. Baker hinted at this when he told Cardinals reporters “you’ll probably see us all on Kittle” this week.
But multiple clashes between Kittle and Baker are inevitable, simply because Kittle is such a central part of both the 49ers’ pass and run games and Baker — who led the NFL in solo tackles in 2019 — is one of the league’s most versatile defenders.
“He’s a safety that just does it all,” Kittle said of Baker. “His mindset, I love watching Budda play. He’s a monster. He’s all over the field. He’s the guy that if you do not block him, he will ruin your day every single play. Whole game.
“If you have a 70-play game and you don’t block him on 70 plays, he’s gonna make the play 70 times. That’s just who he is. There’s a reason he led the NFL in solo tackles. There’s a reason he just got the contract he did. He’s a hell of a football player.”
The respect is mutual. Kittle said that Baker was one of the first to phone him with congratulations when Kittle signed a five-year deal worth up to $75 million in August. Kittle then returned the favor after Baker inked a four-year deal worth up to $59 million earlier this month.
In the past, this might’ve been considered an unusual matchup given the fact that Kittle is 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds while Baker checks in at only 5-10 and 195 pounds. But it’s representative of the evolving NFL, one in which tight ends showcase receiver skills and defensive backs are required to play larger than their size.
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“He’s everywhere at the same time,” 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman said on a Zoom call Thursday. “He’s one of the hardest-playing football players. He plays like a giant.
“So I think you have to take size out of that equation. It’s more of a chess match of positioning and understanding of route concepts and things of that nature. Because regardless of what his size says on paper, he makes every play that he needs to make and he’s in position the majority of the time.”
An exception, of course, is that electric touchdown Kittle scored against Baker last season.
“George made an unbelievable release at the line, got a little separation,” Garoppolo said on a Zoom call Wednesday. “That’s the hard thing against Budda and all their cover guys is they don’t give you much separation.”
But Kittle did what essentially every other player his size cannot do — he rocketed away from Baker to make room for Garoppolo’s pass, and then he bullied forward with the physicality expected of a 250-pounder.
“He just had to throw him off of him to get him off of him in that situation,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said of Kittle and Baker on a Zoom call Wednesday. “(Baker) is a sticky cover guy. This is as good as a safety as there is in this league. George is as good of a tight end as there is in this league.”
Kittle finished the first half against Arizona with six catches for 79 yards — a torrid pace considering he’d only played for just over 15 minutes.
Kittle’s knee injury, however, became a more painful issue in the second half. He exited the game and also missed the 49ers’ rematch with the Cardinals two weeks later. That put the matchup with Baker on hiatus.
Entering Sunday, Kittle is again a problem the Cardinals must address if they’re to challenge the favored 49ers. According to Football Outsiders’ DVOA, no NFL team was worse when it came to defending tight ends than Arizona in 2019.
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That’s a big reason why the Cardinals drafted Simmons: Arizona’s defense badly needed to complement Baker on the back end, especially since the 49ers were in their division.
“I don’t know if there’s a George Kittle stopper from what I’ve seen,” Arizona coach Kliff Kingsbury said on a Wednesday conference call with the Bay Area media.
But if there’s a player to pair with Simmons who’s versatile enough to disrupt Kittle’s flow, who has the speed to perform in pass coverage and the chutzpah to missile around the tight end’s ferocious blocks and derail the 49ers’ run game, it might be Baker.
To prepare, Kittle has been watching film of Baker’s 2019 games this week. He’s been most impressed by the safety’s performance from Week 17, when the Cardinals played the Rams after both teams had been eliminated from playoff contention.
“You find Budda Baker going 100 mph on every single play,” Kittle said. “It didn’t matter if they were winning, losing, how much time was on the clock. He is flying around, hitting people, getting the ball loose.
“If that’s what you’re getting Week 17 when there’s no chance of going to the playoffs, what do you expect in Week 1 of a new season? He’s gonna come after it every single play, so if I don’t bring the intensity, I’m gonna look like a fool out there. I will be bringing my intensity and I know that our whole team is because I know that he is very much on our radar. …
“We compete at a very high level, we have a lot of intensity and we both love the game of football. I mean, what more do you want in a matchup?”
— Reported from Santa Clara
(Photo: Matt Kartozian / USA Today)
