Dieter Kurtenbach: Bosa and Kittle aren't all the way back (yet), but that's more than good enough for the 49ers for now

Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News on Sep 16, 2026

Published in Football

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Great players don’t need perfection to ruin an opponent’s afternoon. No, they just need a helmet, a pulse and a good game plan.

Case in point: George Kittle and Nick Bosa in the 49ers’ 27-7 Week 1 beatdown of the Rams.

Kittle is fresh (as in January 2026) off a ruptured Achilles tendon. Bosa was dragging around a knee that has seen its ACL surgically repaired twice and had a fresh flare-up of patellar tendinitis to boot.

Neither looked anywhere close to their peak, extraterrestrial selves of Niners seasons past.

It didn’t matter. A diminished version of two generational stars was more than enough to hand Sean McVay a 20-point humiliation in Australia.

If you’re rooting for the Niners’ downfall, that shouldn’t offer comfort. It should chill your bones to the absolute marrow. These guys are just getting started again — and the Rams didn’t come close to taking advantage of the low-water mark.

No, San Francisco didn’t even get Hall of Fame-level mastery from them in Week 1, the kind Fred Warner served up with his usual sideline-to-sideline brilliance.

Rather, it received a controlled, pitch-count rehearsal on a cricket pitch from the recovering duo.

Bosa managed 30 defensive snaps (59%). Kittle clocked 30 offensive snaps (46%).

And they might have been playing at those percentage points as well.

Bosa spent half the morning slipping on the Melbourne Cricket Ground turf like a guy learning to ice skate in dress shoes. When he did have his footing, he relied on more power than speed in his first game since last September.

Kittle looked like he was taking a stutter step with his bad wheel just to fire off the line of scrimmage. He was noticeably slower than when we last saw him blur through secondaries.

And all of that makes total sense. Returning from an Achilles tear isn’t like bouncing back from a bad night’s sleep (looking at you, Rams). A third career ACL tear isn’t anything to gloss over.

No, bouncing back from those injuries is a grueling, agonizing slog through scar tissue and doubt, to the point where even being on the field in Week 1 is an incredible accomplishment.

But the tracking numbers backed up the eye test. Across five targets from Brock Purdy, Kittle averaged 1.74 yards of separation at pass arrival. That’s … minuscule. It’s also less than half his career standard and the fourth-lowest regular-season separation mark he has ever posted per NFL tracking data.

Purdy — who was clearly trying to get Kittle involved in the pass game early, only to abandon the plan as the game progressed — even chucked a ball the tight end’s way into quadruple coverage, prompting Kittle to crack postgame: “Keep throwing those.”

Yet, 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan and Purdy made the puzzle pieces fit anyway.

Sure, the People’s Tight End didn’t have his vintage jet fuel to snap off his routes, but he never shies away from the dirty work. He found more than enough ground force to mash edge defenders in the run game, seal lanes and anchor an offense that downright bullied the Rams’ defensive front, particularly in the second half.

Then there’s Bosa. Before flying halfway around the planet with tendinitis barking in his surgically repaired knee, he had barely practiced.

But he was adamant that he was going to play. And play he did.

He wasn’t the relentless, game-wrecking pass rusher we’re used to seeing, generating just one pressure across 18 pass-rush snaps. But he did, however, inflict some psychological dread.

McVay threw tight end chips at him, slid protections his way, and watched Matthew Stafford get rid of the football like a live grenade just knowing No. 97 was out there.

And when Bosa commands triple-teams, interior wrecking balls like Niners defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa feast with a 22% pressure rate.

Oh, and Bosa did some dirty work, too — he shut down the perimeter run game as an edge defender, posting two tackles for loss. He was nearly impeccable against the run.

Will Kittle ever separate on safeties and linebackers like he did in, say, 2023? Will Bosa ever regain that lightning-quick bend around the corner?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But even if they never regain peak form, two all-time greats proved that they have an awfully long way to fall before they’re merely average.

Most players decline into irrelevance. Hall of Famers decline into Pro Bowl-caliber workhorses.

And all that said, if what we saw on the other side of the world was simply the floor of their recoveries, imagine what the ceiling looks like come November and December.

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