49ers Te George Kittle Believes A Previous Injury Led To His Achilles Tear

The San Francisco 49ers played a playoff game against the Super Bowl champions without a player who is arguably the most critical to their offensive success. George Kittle tore his Achilles tendon the week prior against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Kittle made an appearance on an episode of the “Bussin’ With the Boys” podcast on Tuesday, where Kittle reiterated how his recovery is going great, and he’s “exactly where I want to be.”

The conversation turned when Kittle said people were asking him why the injury happened and what led to it. In the most Kittle response, he said, “I don’t know, dude, it was Week 20 of an NFL fcking season, my body’s broken down.”

The real eyebrow raiser was when Kittle mentioned he may have had an undisclosed injury late in the season:

“My biggest thing that I thought it was was when I played the Colts on Monday Night Football. I tore like two ligaments in my ankle and then I hurt it again because I kept playing on it. And so then I was very lopsided, or I was compensating really bad. I think that was a big part of it too, like I was compensating for the last three weeks on one ankle, and like, so all the weight was on my right side. I was basically running — everything was on my right side, plus it was a weird position.”

Kittle said before the previous ankle injury and his adjustment to it, this was his “best guess” as to what led to him tearing his Achilles. Kittle said there was no prior soreness in his Achilles ahead of the Eagles game.

Kittle ended up playing 41 of the 66 snaps against the Colts before leaving early. He did not play in the Week 17 matchup against the Bears. One injury leading to another isn’t terribly surprising, especially when you consider how late in the season it was and consider everything Kittle went through physically during the season.