Sports
Inside the mind — and tattoos — of 49ers’ George Kittle, one of the NFL’s most interesting players
“Howdy!” George Kittle says as he steps onto the podium on Nov. 24 in Green Bay, Wisc.
It’s how he begins every news conference, and this time he seems disappointed when no one says howdy back.
But it doesn’t seem like a howdy type of moment. The San Francisco 49ers have just lost 38-10 to the Packers, which has been interpreted as the death blow to their season. Everyone else is gloomy. Fred Warner calls the game “probably the worst I’ve been a part of.” Deebo Samuel Sr. doesn’t even talk to reporters afterward. The day is cold, the mood funereal.
Except for Kittle. In a game full of lousy statistics, he finishes with 82 receiving yards and the team’s only touchdown. And afterward, the irrepressible tight end refuses to give in to the gathering darkness.
“No, why would it?” Kittle said when asked if the awful outing erodes his optimism about making the playoffs. “It’s definitely an uphill grind. But we get to see what we’re made of. And I’m looking forward to that.”
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The season has followed a similar script. The 49ers’ 2024 campaign will be known as one in which their stars, so radiant the year prior, were obscured by thick, unrelenting clouds. The exception again is Kittle, who at 31 is their oldest offensive weapon but leads them in receiving yards and touchdowns. With three games to go, he ranks third among NFL tight ends in receiving yards and is poised to surpass 1,000 yards for the second straight year and the fourth time in his career.
Longtime friend Trent Taylor thinks Kittle’s mentality — no one in the NFL is having a better time than Kittle — is tied to his success. There’s power in all those howdys.
“While he’s out here working his tail off, he also knows how to have fun with it,” Taylor, a 49ers receiver, said. “And the guys who don’t know how to have fun with it, those are the guys who burn out. I think that’s why he’s been so good for such a long time.”
The George Kittle who arrived at 49ers headquarters along with Taylor in 2017 — both were fifth-round picks — looked nothing like today’s version.
“I was fatter,” noted Kittle, who today weighs 243 pounds but had risen as high as 265. “In college they told me I had to weigh a lot more. I drank eight protein shakes a day. Don’t ever do that.”
He also had close-cropped hair, no facial hair and no visible tattoos. Today, he’s bearded and his blond hair is long. He dramatically whips his head back to get it out of his face before putting on his helmet.
And there’s ink everywhere.
Kittle explains he has a good-guy arm and a bad-guy arm and then ticks off each tat. The right arm and hand include Hobbes, the fun-loving tiger from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Master Chief, the stoic protagonist in the Halo video games, and Godzilla.
“Godzilla’s a good guy,” he insisted.
The bad-guy arm includes Venom and the Joker, a tattoo he got on the eve of his 2019 wedding (to the chagrin of then-fiancee, Claire) and is a persona Kittle often adopts on game days.
“His dark place is the Joker mentality — where he’s giggling out there and kind of making light of everything,” Taylor said. “When George is out there goofing off, that’s when he’s ready to go to war.”
And he’s just getting started. Kittle says he’s planning a three-headed tattoo for the bad-guy arm, then launches into a two-minute explanation of what he’s contemplating. He’s like a 6-year-old going over his Christmas list. One head might be Sauron, the ultimate bad guy in “Lord of the Rings.” Sauron has always been a personal favorite. Another might be a dark figure from a cartoon called “Samurai Jack.” And the third?
“Have you ever seen the movie ‘Puss in Boots’?” he asks. “The second one, ‘The Last Wish’? It’s fantastic — significantly better than the first. Huge fan of it. There’s a character in the second one. And it’s a gray wolf and he’s known as Death. And he’s coming for Puss in Boots. And his character in the movie — it’s just fantastic.”
(Courtesy of San Francisco 49ers)
What 31-year-old professional football player gets giddy over a Puss in Boots tattoo?
For a glimpse of what’s swirling inside Kittle’s ever-active mind — and to figure out the origin of his tattoos — you have to go to the 335-acre farm in Lockridge, Iowa, where he grew up.
Calvin and Hobbes, the blond kid and tiger who go on all sorts of adventures together? That sounds an awful lot like Kittle and his sister, Emma, who is three years older.
Their dad, Bruce, would read to them every night before bed. And it wasn’t “The Hungry Caterpillar.” Instead, he’d pick up “Lord of the Rings,” even when George was really little, lighting up his boyhood brain with stories of giant spiders, great falls into the abyss and taking on armies of blood-thirsty orcs.
“My dad had a great story-telling voice,” George said. “He could change his voice enough to where 4-year-old me thought he was watching a movie. I loved it.”
The next day, the kids would live out the adventures — leaping off bales of hay, chasing rabbits and sidestepping the snakes and spiders that lived in the old barn. Emma said it was as if she and her brother grew up in a different time.
“Growing up on a farm with horses — when you think about ‘Lord of the Rings’ and those stories and the Riders of Rohan? They’re on horseback,” she said. “There was just so much relatability where we felt like we could be one of the nine on these quests. For us, the magic of the storybooks felt very real.”
George Kittle’s imagination came to life on his family farm in Iowa with his sister, Emma, and cousin Henry Krieger, who later played football at Iowa with George and had a brief NFL career. (Courtesy of Jan Kreiger)
The farm was a place where the kids’ imaginations could run wild and where they could test themselves.
Emma remembered an episode when George was 8 and was helping with a young pony named Jack. The ponies had a mean streak and were particularly nasty that day. Emma and their mom, Jan Krieger, watched the scene unfold.
“Jack kicked up and just about smoked George right in the face,” she recalled. “I think he might have clipped his shoulder a little bit. And it scared us really bad and it was like, ‘Get him out of the ring!’”
George, who was all wobbly legs and elbows at the time, didn’t let Jack be the lord of the ring that day.
“You could see the rage bubbling up,” Emma said. “And he went in there to show him who’s boss. He didn’t say that, but he flung the gate open, marched in, grabbed the harness and told Jack, ‘We’re not going to be that way.’ I just remember Mom and I were freaking out.”
There were other books — the “Harry Potter” series, for instance — mixed in, but “Lord of the Rings” was the go-to, the one that stuck. Bruce thinks he probably read the trilogy aloud three times, nearly 1.5 million words total.
“By the third time, George was like, ‘Dad, skip ahead to the battle of Helm’s Deep!’” he said.
The bedtime stories sparked George’s love of books. He listens to audio versions to and from work and always has a stack — Sherlock Holmes mysteries, crime thrillers and especially sci-fi and adventure series — on his bedside table. “Lord of the Rings” also frames how he sees life and certainly how he views an NFL season, which also revolves around a powerful ring. It’s no wonder Kittle is the NFL’s biggest character. He sees himself as a character in a 17-chapter adventure tale.
But which one? Who was his favorite growing up?
“I should say Smeagol just to mess with him and give you a dark article,” Emma said with a laugh.
She and Bruce agreed that Aragorn, the virtuous leader played in the film series by Viggo Mortensen and also known as Strider in the books, probably was George’s favorite and a role model.
“But,” Bruce said, “it’s hard not to be in the camp of the Hobbits, too. Because so many people discount them because they’re smaller.”
Bruce, a former Iowa offensive lineman who coached George when he was little, noted his son was “super gangly” as a boy.
“There was a long time when he looked like a baby deer,” he said. “You know, a lot of legs.”
George Kittle and his older sister, Emma, developed a love for books thanks to the nightly readings from their father, Bruce. (Courtesy of Jan Kreiger)
And no one thought George was anything special coming out of Iowa, either. The 49ers only caught onto him after zeroing in on his buddy, Hawkeye quarterback C.J. Beathard, whom they drafted in the third round.
“George being a later-round draft choice — I think there was a little bit of Hobbitt-esque leaning,” Bruce said. “Like, ‘I’ve got a lot more power and gifts than you might imagine.’”
George conceded that those guesses are correct.
“I mean, Strider’s hard to beat,” he said.
But he added he also has an appreciation for Sauron, the all-seeing antagonist, and for bad guys in general. It’s why he has so many bad-guy tattoos, which he uses to channel dark energy on game days. After all, sweet, whimsical, hilarious Hobbes — who’s an excellent approximation of every-day-life George — isn’t the ideal persona when your job is cutting down 235-pound linebackers on run plays.
“It’s not all the time,” George said. “But there are times when you want it to be a little bit of chaos and laugh at life like the Joker, and there are times when you need to be as serious as possible and do things to get the job done like Master Chief. There’s also time to breathe fire like Godzilla. There’s certain energy I can pull from these things. I like seeing them and I just kind of channel it when I look at them.”
Taylor admits he used to think it was strange when he would cross paths with Kittle before games and the tight end would be muttering to himself as he morphed into one of his Sunday characters. Then he realized everyone was going through their own transformations.
“Everyone’s doing this weird stuff before the game,” Taylor said. “And it’s like, ‘Who am I to judge?’ We’ve all got to be a little bit crazy to play this game of football.”
The tale of Aragorn, Frodo and Sam also lends itself well to what the 49ers are going through now. The trilogy is about faith and sacrifice, grittiness and resilience and maintaining the course even in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s also heavy in veneration for those who fought before you.
“It means showing up even when you’re (6-8) and it’s not looking great,” Bruce said. “Because the game knows. You don’t want to create bad football karma.”
Which was why there was a tense “howdy” when George took the podium after their most recent game. The 12-6 loss to the Los Angeles Rams all but eliminated the 49ers from the playoffs and, on top of that, it was marked by a teammate, De’Vondre Campbell Sr., quitting midway through the contest.
George Kittle, normally so chipper during post-game press conferences, was anything but following De’Vondre Campbell’s unexpected exit Thursday. Look who Kittle was wearing/channeling…
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— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows.bsky.social) December 15, 2024 at 10:25 AM
With no Sauron on his arm — yet — Kittle wore the “Lord of Rings” baddie on the front of his T-shirt instead, then channeled some rarely seen postgame energy.
“Whatever his decision was, it wasn’t for this organization, it wasn’t for this team,” Kittle said. “And that’s on him. I’m not very happy about it. I wish I would’ve heard about it on the field, but I didn’t.”
This year, the path seems blocked for Kittle and his companions. They’re two games back in the division with no edge in tiebreakers. It’s very unlikely they will finally find the magical ring this season.
But while it might be the end of this particular book, the Kittles are certain there’s more to the story. And they know the darkness will only make the light seem that much brighter. That is, it’s no time to be glum.
“It’s a beautiful, beautiful ride,” Bruce said. “Yes, it’s tumultuous, but what avenue of life isn’t? So quit moping and go f—ing do it.”
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb: The Athletic; photos: Michael Owens and Brooke Sutton / Getty Images)
For two-thirds of Sunday’s Long Beach Grand Prix, Alex Palou bided his time … waiting for the one break he needed.
It came in the form of a caution on the 58th lap, allowing him to overtake front-runner Felix Rosenqvist exiting pit lane and hold the lead the rest of the way, taking the checkered flag by 3.96 seconds for his third triumph in five IndyCar Series races this season and his first at Long Beach.
Right after being showered with applause and confetti at victory lane, the 29-year-old Spaniard thanked his crew, whose quick work on the last pit stop proved to be the difference.
“Everyone was coming in on that yellow and they did an incredible job,” he said. “We were either going to win it or not win right there.”
Rosenqvist settled for second and Scott Dixon, Palou’s Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, was third.
It was the 11th win over the last 22 races dating to 2024 for the Barcelona native and the 22nd win of his career, tying Tony Bettenhausen and Emerson Fittipaldi. It also vaulted Palou to the top of the series standings as he chases his fourth series championship in a row and fifth overall. Palou won the opener March 1 in St. Petersburg (also a street course) and the fourth race March 29 in Alabama.
Palou led for only 32 of the 90 laps Sunday and acknowledged it would have been difficult to catch Rosenqvist if not for the stoppage.
“I wasn’t giving up but it would’ve been tough to get him today,” Palou acknowledged. “He was already three seconds ahead. I was happy with my car but I was struggling more on the soft tires than the hards so I’d say my chances were low. The feeling was great seeing all the open space coming out of pit lane because when you spend 60 laps behind a car it disturbs you. I tried to match him on soft tires but it wasn’t working.”
Alex Palou speeds through a curve of the track.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
In six starts at Long Beach, Palou never has finished lower than fifth.
There is little room to maneuver on the 1.968-mile course with 11 tight turns, but after starting in the third position next to defending champion Kyle Kirkwood, Palou managed to sneak past Pato O’Ward into second place heading into the first turn on Lap 2.
“Making that move on the straightaway was big because I knew it was one of our only chances to get a pass on Pato,” Palou said. “I got that good run on that last corner and he didn’t expect it.”
This year marked the 51st edition of the longest-running major street race in North America, which started in 1975 as part of the Formula 5000 Series, switched to the CART/Champ Car World Series in 1984 and joined the IndyCar Series in 2009.
The top four qualifiers started on softer, high-grip “alternate” tires to establish position while the rest of the grid started on harder, more durable “primaries” to manage degradation on the 110-degree track surface. Of the 25 starters, 24 completed the 177.12 miles.
“We were going to make the two-stop strategy work but didn’t know if it would be doable or not,” Palou added. “As soon as I saw I couldn’t get Felix it was all about patience, fuel and waiting for the right time. I owe this win to my team. Without that pit stop I probably wouldn’t be sitting here now. It only takes one mistake to go from second to seventh, but they’re great under pressure.”
Cars make their way down a straightaway during Long Beach Grand Prix.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
Past winners Will Power and Josef Newgarden moved into the top two positions after Rosenqvist pitted, but the Swede regained the lead when Newgarden pitted for the first time on Lap 37 and dropped back to 14th.
The first 45 laps were caution-free as Rosenqvist, Palou, Kirkwood, David Malukas and O’Ward held the top five spots. Newgarden’s chances declined upon discovering a flat spot on his left front tire, and he dropped back to 14th.
Rosenqvist’s three-second lead was erased when debris on the track exiting the Aquarium Fountain drew the only yellow flag all afternoon and narrowed the gap. Capitalizing on favorable pit position, Palou emerged from the lane just ahead of Rosenqvist.
Rosenqvist. who won the pole position with a lap time of 1 minute 7.4625 seconds in qualifying, had mixed emotions as the runner-up after leading for 51 laps with no win to show for it.
“You want to win when you have an opportunity, but I’m proud of today,” Rosenqvist said.
“We weren’t as good as Alex on the blacks … the last pit cycle was the defining moment. We had to come around 14, he had more of an opening, and his crew nailed it. That happens.”
Kirkwood, who was vying for his third win in four years, finished right where he started in fourth.
“I had a good cushion and figured even with a bad stop I’d probably stay ahead but I knew there’d probably be a yellow at some point and there it came,” Rosenqvist lamented. “Considering Alex had primary [tires], also I think we would’ve been able to hold him off. It’s definitely disappointing when you can’t wrap it up.”
Dixon, who started in the sixth position, was third and earned his first podium this season and the 136th of his career.
Fans watch with two laps left in the race.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
“The race itself was a bit blah — I sat in the same position for most of it,” Dixon said. “Luckily for us we had it easy out of that last stop.”
Al Unser Jr. holds the record for most wins at Long Beach, chalking up six in eight years, including an unmatched four in a row from 1988 to 1991.
Tom Sargent is becoming a fan of street circuits after two wins this weekend. Driving the Porsche 911 Cup for GMG Racing in the Mobil Pro Class, the 22-year-old Australian led from start to finish in Race 1 of the Carrera Cup North America on Saturday. In Race 2 on Sunday morning, he again started from the pole and claimed a 0.965-second victory over Aaron Jeansonne to complete the double.
In his last bid at Long Beach three years ago, he hit the wall on Lap 2 but still finished second.
“Momentum in sports is critical and the past few weeks have been really cool for me,” Sargent said. “I didn’t do any street circuit racing before I came to the States. Maybe it fits my driving style.”
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LAS VEGAS – Finn Balor and Dominik Mysterio were once brothers in arms in the Judgment Day. The two helped the faction run “Monday Night Raw” for several years.
As championships and opportunities came and went, the rift between Balor and Mysterio grew. It came to a head when Balor caused Mysterio to lose the Intercontinental Championship to Penta. Balor leaving the Judgment Day left Mysterio and Liv Morgan as the leaders with JD McDonagh, Raquel Rodriguez and Roxanne Perez sticking around.
Finn Balor is introduced before his match against Dominik Mysterio during WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nev., on April 19, 2026. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The latter four chose to ride with Mysterio and attacked Balor on one episode of Raw.
The bitter war led to a match Sunday night at WrestleMania 42. To make matters more interesting, Raw General Manager Adam Pearce made the match a street fight hours before the show was set to begin.
Balor had vowed to bring the “Demon” out and he certainly did.
JACOB FATU PUTS DREW MCINTYRE IN THE ‘REAR VIEW’ IN UNSANCTIONED MATCH AT WRESTLEMANIA 42
Finn Balor is introduced before his match against Dominik Mysterio during WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nev., on April 19, 2026. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Balor made his way to the ring in his “Demon” gear, dripping with red and black paint. Mysterio was in a mask with other Mysterio supporters.
The two then proceeded to beat the crud out of each other.
Mysterio wrapped Balor’s head in between a chair and hit a 619 on him. He tried to pin Balor, but to no avail. At another point, Mysterio tossed Balor through a table set up in the corner.
As many have learned, it’s hard to keep your demons down. Mysterio learned the hard way.
Balor would not give up. Balor clotheslined Mysterio, hit him with a chair multiple times before wrapping his head in between the chair and drop-kicking him into the corner. Balor put Mysterio onto a table and hit the Coup de Grâce for the win.
Dominik Mysterio is introduced before his match against Finn Balor during WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nev., on April 19, 2026. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
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Balor excised his own demons, while Mysterio is still haunted.
DENVER — What do you know? The once-stampeding Dodgers have been caged by the Colorado Rockies.
With a 9-6 loss Sunday at Coors Field, the two-time defending World Series champions lost back-to-back games for the first time this season. The Dodgers again couldn’t hold a lead, letting the Rockies tee off for 15 hits.
Nor could the Dodgers keep up offensively at the hitter-friendly park — though they put some pressure on in the ninth inning, when Shohei Ohtani led off with a ground-rule double and the Dodgers scored twice to cut the lead to three runs. Then the new guy, Ryan Ward, made the final out in his big league debut, robbed of a hit and a chance to keep chipping away by a diving Troy Johnston in right field.
Before that, the Rockies — who beat the Dodgers twice in 13 meetings all of last season — chased starter Roki Sasaki from the game in the fifth inning and then ruffled the Dodgers’ relievers. That included closer Edwin Díaz, who came on in the eighth and promptly gave up three singles, a walk and two runs before being pulled with the Dodgers trailing 8-4.
Dodgers starting pitcher Roki Sasaki gave up three runs on seven hits in 4-2/3 innings Sunday against the Rockies in Denver.
(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
He and Blake Treinen combined to face eight batters without getting an out.
“They both weren’t sharp,” said manager Dave Roberts, who had theories but not many answers — though he did have real concern, especially about Díaz, who recently had his right knee checked out by the medical staff.
Roberts said the closer wanted to pitch after nine days off, even though it wasn’t a save situation. But his velocity was slightly down (95.4 mph vs. 95.8) and so, “today was a tough evaluation,” the manager said.
“It really was,” Roberts said. “Because, you know, I know what it’s supposed to look like, and when it doesn’t look like that, it gets a little concerning, really.”
And losing for the second time to the Rockies, who are now 9-13? Being in danger of losing their four-game series, after arriving in Denver without having lost to a National League opponent, against a club that hasn’t made the postseason since 2018?
It’s well below the bar the Dodgers have set, and it added a bitter note to Ward’s otherwise sweet debut.
Ward punched a big league clock for the first time wearing No. 67 and cranked his first hit off Rockies starter Michael Lorenzen in the fourth inning, lining a changeup to right field for a single that scored Andy Pages, made it 3-0 and got the 20-some members of Ward’s party up, jumping in place, hugging and high-fiving.
“When I was on first base, I got to see them all jumping around up there,” Ward said. “That was a pretty special moment.”
He also singled in the sixth and swung on the first pitch in his first at-bat, a fly out in the third inning.
The Dodgers gave Sasaki a 2-0 lead in the third. Alex Freeland drove in Hyeseong Kim, and Shohei Ohtani doubled in Freeland — and extended his career-best on-base streak to 51 games, moving past Willie Keeler into third place in Dodgers history.
Sasaki went 4-2/3 innings, threw 78 pitches and gave up three runs on seven hits, striking out two and walking two. His ERA after his fourth start: 6.11, worst in the six-man rotation.
The Dodgers fell behind 6-5 in the seventh when Treinen — who was cleared Friday after he was struck in the head by a batted ball during batting practice — gave up four consecutive hits, including a two-run home run by Mickey Moniak.
The result likely will be a minor detail when Ward tells the story years from now about getting the call after first baseman Freddie Freeman was placed on the paternity list.
The Dodgers’ No. 19 prospect and reigning Pacific Coast League MVP spent the last seven years in the minors. Last season, he hit 36 home runs and drove in 122 runs with a .937 on-base-plus-slugging percentage for triple-A Oklahoma City, and he has a 1.020 OPS and four homers this year.
Ward made it a point to improve his chase rate, draw more walks and get on base more frequently, everything the Dodgers asked of him. He also passed the broadest patience test.
“The plate discipline, being a better hitter … he’s done all that,” Roberts said. “He’s improved his defense. But honestly, for me, just not to let his lack of opportunity in the big leagues deter him. That’s easy when you get frustrated and let it affect performance, and he hasn’t done that.”
If anything, Ward said, the waiting made him better.
“I used it to keep going. ‘OK, if I’m not there yet, what do I have to do to get there?’” he said. “‘What part of my game do I need to work on to keep getting better?’
“I used it as fire to keep working.”
That will be the Dodgers’ assignment too.
In the finale of the four-game series Monday, the Dodgers are expected to start left-hander Justin Wrobleski (2-0, 2.12) against Colorado left-hander Jose Quintana (0-1, 5.63).
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