San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan speaks at a news conference after an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks in Santa Clara, Calif., Sunday, Dec. 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
The San Francisco 49ers were without their star tight end this offseason during OTAs and minicamp as George Kittle was recovering from offseason core surgery. On a recent podcast, Kittle revealed that, while he’s on track for a full recovery and will be ready for training camp next month, he lost nearly 30 pounds due to surgery:
He said laughing hurt, but sneezing “was the worst” as scar tissue popped. “It was horrible,” Kittle said; he is a little skinnier and needs to gain about ten pounds.
Later on, little did say his shoulder is better than ever, and now he can finally throw a football:
“My shoulder has been messed up since high school. And luckily, I don’t have to throw a football, I’m just blocking, like engaged, so my shoulders don’t bug me too often. But I hurt my shoulder during the Super Bowl. AC sprain chipped a bone. And now that it’s mostly healed, I can now throw a football.
It’s like a kid that gets hit in the head, and you wake up with a superpower. Like, ‘Hey, now I can throw a football.’ It’s unreal. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I started throwing a football, and I can actually zip it. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what it feels like to throw a football. My labrum doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Kittle spoke more about his injuries, saying, “I was crushed; I had a tough go there for a little bit” after being banged up late in the season:
“I had several things. I don’t know what I’d get the Niners in trouble for. I think we reported everything as it went. But NFC Championship game, the third play of the game, someone stepped on my foot and got rolled up on, so I tore the MCL of my big toe.”
One of the co-hosts asked if it was true that your toe has an MCL, and Kittle said, “It has two, apparently.” George continued, after asking what it feels like when you suffer that injury:
“Walking is not a thing. You’re not doing anything. It’s just stiff. Right after the Super Bowl, I re-fractured a rib and had my shoulder and my toe. I was just laying there after the Super Bowl like, “Holy sh*t, this is going to be a tough bounce back.”
