- Kittle expects to clear the PUP list before the Aug. 30 cutdown to 53 players.
- A player left on reserve/PUP at cutdown must sit out his team’s first four games.
- San Francisco is +1500 to win the Super Bowl and +825 to win the NFC at Bovada.
- A study of NFL skill-position Achilles tears found 57% returned to play, with tight ends at 71%.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle said Sunday he expects to come off the physically unable to perform list before the NFL cuts rosters to 53 players on Aug. 30, the date that decides whether he misses one game or four.
Cutdown Day Decides Four Games, Not One
Kittle has been on the active/PUP list since camp opened, a designation that lets him rehab at the team facility and sit in meetings but bars him from practicing. It expires at cutdown. A player still unable to practice when rosters go to 53 shifts to reserve/PUP, comes off the active roster and cannot play until after his team’s fourth game. He keeps his salary and does not occupy one of the 53 spots. He simply is not available in September.
That is why Aug. 30 is the deadline that matters and Sept. 10 is not. San Francisco opens the season against the Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sept. 10, Sept. 11 in Melbourne, in the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia. If Kittle practices before cutdown, missing Week 1 costs one game. If he does not, the calendar takes four.
Asked whether he would be ready, Kittle told Fox Sports on Sunday, “I have a chance.” He added: “We’re running around a lot, hitting top speeds. Hopefully we’re back in pads practicing sooner than later.”
Pads Before The Flight Are The Real Tell
Running in shorts on a side field is not the hurdle. Contact is. Kittle has been limited to individual work all camp and has not put on pads once. He named that himself as the checkpoint.
“Hopefully I’m in pads sooner than later, because I don’t want my first time to be in pads traveling in Australia,” Kittle said.
Kittle tore the tendon Jan. 11 in a playoff game at Philadelphia. His surgeon, Dr. Neal ElAttrache, told him early in the rehab that Week 1 was possible.
He tempered the urgency himself, noting the schedule now runs 18 weeks. “I want to play in every football game that I possibly can play in. But I’m also aware it’s an 18-week season and so hey if you miss Week 1 and you’re playing Week 2, it is what it is.”
The Achilles Data Is Kinder To Tight Ends
Jan. 11 to Aug. 30 is seven months and 19 days. Jan. 11 to Sept. 10 is just under eight months. Both are ahead of where the position usually lands.
A study of NFL skill-position players who tore an Achilles between 2009 and 2016, published in Foot & Ankle Specialist, found that 57% returned to play at all. Tight ends came out best of any position at 71%, wide receivers worst at 38%. The production damage was not spread evenly. Receivers who made it back caught significantly fewer passes per game than matched controls, and returning defensive players fell off in tackles, passes defended and fumbles forced or recovered. The paper reported no such decline at tight end.
Kittle is 32 and turns 33 in October. The 71% return rate is the encouraging half of that read, and the absence of a measured production drop at his position is the other. Age and a seven-month clock are the counterweight, and none of it is settled by a player hitting top speed on a side field. Pads are the honest signal. A tendon ready for a September game is one its owner will hit somebody with in August.
The Board Has San Francisco Third In The NFC
The futures market does not have the 49ers near the top. Two of the division’s three contenders are California teams, which makes the NFC West the board that matters most to gambling in California. San Francisco prices behind both of its rivals:
| Bovada futures | Price |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles Rams to win the Super Bowl | +475 |
| Seattle Seahawks to win the Super Bowl | +1200 |
| San Francisco 49ers to win the Super Bowl | +1500 |
| Los Angeles Rams to win the NFC | +275 |
| Seattle Seahawks to win the NFC | +675 |
| San Francisco 49ers to win the NFC | +825 |
| NFC West to produce the champion | +250 |
Read those as payouts, not forecasts. A +1500 ticket on San Francisco returns 15-1 and implies roughly 6.2%; the Rams at +475 imply about 17.4%. Whether either team’s true chance beats what its price pays is the entire bet, and a tight end’s availability for four games is a small input into a 17-game season.
The number tying the two threads together sits at the bottom of that table. The NFC West is +250 to produce the Super Bowl winner, the shortest of the eight divisions and half the price of the four sitting at +500. Week 1 in Melbourne pits the division’s shortest team against the 49ers, and Kittle’s cutdown status decides whether San Francisco opens with him on the field.
None of those prices can be bet legally inside the state. There are still no licensed California sportsbooks, online or retail.
Rosters across the league must be down to 53 players on Aug. 30.