49ers’ George Kittle on Super Bowl: ‘The more you watch it, the more it sucks’
Not long after Chiefs running back Damien Williams stuck a dagger in the 49ers’ hearts with a 38-yard touchdown run in Super Bowl LIV, San Francisco tight end George Kittle made a pledge to himself.
In the NFL Network’s Game Day All Access, a camera caught the mic’d-up Kittle say to no one in particular: “I will be back here. I will be back here and I will be back with a vengeance. You will not get the best of me, no sir.”
Kittle talked with Sports Illustrated this week about the Super Bowl and what he’s up to during the coronavirus pandemic. He talked about building a gym in his home and how the 49ers’ video meetings are recorded so he can view them again.
And Kittle has watched a replay of the Super Bowl, although seeing the 49ers cough up a 10-point fourth-quarter lead and lose 31-20 is not easy. But, he’s focused on the 2020 season.
“The more you watch it, the more it sucks,” Kittle told Sports Illustrated. “I will say that. It’s not like a dark cloud following me around. It is what it is, it happened. You gotta move on. I don’t know if I’ll use the loss as motivation, but there’s definitely a hunger there. I think that resonates with a lot of guys. I just wanna play football again.”
Kittle opened up about the emptiness he felt after losing to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. His teammates are eager to return to the NFL’s biggest stage, he told Sports Illustrated.
“Losing the Super Bowl, it’s awful, I don’t wish that on anyone, unless I’m playing them, but I think it definitely was a teaching moment,” Kittle said. “Guys are definitely very hungry, we want to go back and win that one. Guys are definitely holding themselves accountable. ...
“And I think guys have really responded well to it. As a leader on the team, I check in on my guys, I know the tight ends are doing really well, I know our offensive guys are doing well. And we have a lot of hungry guys on defense that are training as hard as they possibly can. I think our team’s gonna come back really well from this. Like I said, I’m just ready to play football again.”
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