Why the 49ers are paying everyone but George Kittle

The 49ers have been awfully generous as of late.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan has a new contract. General manager John Lynch landed a new five-year contract Wednesday. The team even added incentives to running back Raheem Mostert’s contract just days after his agent feebly demanded a trade on Twitter.

With all of this greenback goodwill flying around, it’s fair to wonder when the team’s best player — tight end George Kittle — will be paid. Not anytime soon, is the answer. Kittle, who reported to 49ers camp this week, is in the last year of his rookie contract and is looking for a massive new deal — one that will dramatically reset the tight-end market.

And the 49ers want to pay him at that market-setting rate. Everyone is in agreement that Kittle should be the highest-paid

tight end in the league.

What they cannot agree upon is how much more Kittle will make than his peers.

It’s important to remember that Shanahan and Lynch’s new contracts aren’t subject to a salary cap. Comparing their contract negotiations with Kittles’ isn’t germane. You should also note that Mostert’s new incentives amount to pocket change.

Meanwhile, Kittle wants — and deserves — to be paid like a top wide receiver or tackle. The top players at those positions — players that arguably have less of an impact on the game than Kittle — make roughly 75 percent more than tight ends.

Again, it’s not that the 49ers don’t want to pay Kittle everything he’s worth. It’s that they’re not forced to do so. And while that might seem petty, not paying more than you necessary is also good business. In the NFL, that kind of salary cap shrewdness has a strong correlation to success.

This is why Kittle doesn’t have a new deal yet.

The 49ers don’t have to match Kittle’s demands because right now the only thing he can threaten them with is a bad attitude, and the Niners are betting that taking on a dour disposition is one of the only things No. 85 cannot do. They’re probably right. His reputation as a team leader

— a reputation he holds dear — would be tarnished if he brought contract negotiations into the locker room.

And thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement, Kittle would be bankrupted if he held out of training camp. Under the old agreement, teams would fine players for skipping work but forgive those fines when the player reported. Now, those fines are unforgivable and have increased in severity.

So yeah, Kittle showed up to camp.

The truth is that the Niners can negotiate on a timeline they see fit — a timeline that could easily extend into the 2021 offseason.

That’s because, on top of the new team protections in the CBA, the Niners also have the franchise tag at their disposal.

Kittle is looking for more than $15 million a year and more than $50 million guaranteed on his next deal. The Niners would only have to pay him an estimated $11 million a year in 2021 if they put the franchise tag on him. They could franchise-tag him again in 2022 for $13 million. They could do it a third time and only be paying him $16 million in 2023.

Play it all out under the tag, and Kittle would net roughly $40 million over three years.

That’s the 49ers’ baseline for a new deal. A five-year contract (for amortization purposes) worth an average of roughly $13 million a year with $40 million in guaranteed money.

That would still be the largest tight end contract in NFL history. The guaranteed money would nearly double that of the next-best deal.

But it wouldn’t come close to the level of wide receivers or right tackles.

And if the Niners do improve their offer to Kittle from that baseline, I wouldn’t expect them to do it by much. The salary cap is expected to go down next year thanks to the pandemic limiting or outright preventing fans from being in the stands this season. So the Niners need to mind every penny.

The overarching fact is that the Niners can wait for Kittle and his agent to come to them at the negotiating table. They have team-friendly mechanisms that provide them the benefit of time, all while Kittle plays a sport of physical attrition. Remember, the tight end played the last two years with a torn labrum and last year with a bone chip in his ankle.

Don’t get me wrong: I expect Kittle and the Niners to come to an agreement on a new deal this season. The salary cap for next year is now known and Lynch no longer has to wonder when he’s getting his new deal.

But a new deal won’t happen until Kittle and his camp see the writing on the wall.

It’s not that he doesn’t deserve the contract he wants. It’s that the 49ers don’t need to give it to him.

And that, as the old slogan goes, is life in the NFL.