Tight end Tony Gonzalez spent 17 seasons in the NFL, which consisted of 12 with the Kansas City Chiefs and five with the Atlanta Falcons. He was a 14-time Pro Bowl selection and six-time first team All-Pro over his career. More important, he was consistently a dominating presence on the football field.
It's tough to imagine Gonzalez's name being absent when this year's Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees are announced on Saturday.
The San Francisco 49ers have a pretty good tight end of their own in George Kittle, who just finished his second NFL season. And what a season it was. Kittle set a new single-season NFL record for receiving yards by a tight end with 1,377. He is only 25 years old and his tight ends coach, Jon Embree, who also serves as the assistant head coach, believes he can further benefit from a sit down with a great tight end, like Gonzalez, who was able to sustain success for so long.
That's exactly what Embree, who spoke with Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area last week for the latest 49ers Insider Podcast, is working on setting up. He hopes to have dinner in February or March with Kittle and Gonzalez so the former NFL great can share some wisdom with the budding star.
Embree spent three seasons with the Chiefs as their tight ends coach, coincidentally, at the end of Gonzalez's time there.
"Tony is a great person," Embree said. "We still communicate and still talk. We talked before I came down here (to the Senior Bowl), as a matter of fact.
"Me and him are going to go have dinner with George because I want him to share some things with Kittle that him and I have done together that helped him be successful. And just some things from a mindset standpoint that he did that George needs to do to sustain the success that he had."
In addition to his record-setting 2018 season, Kittle was also selected to and played in his first Pro Bowl and was named a second-team All-Pro. He has averaged 14.4 yards per catch in his two seasons with San Francisco.
"Me and him are just going to be talking and doing dinner with George," Embree continued. "Then George and him are going to do some stuff, stay down there (in Los Angeles) and do some stuff over a week's period, just kind of getting to know each other a little bit and doing some things.
"Tony is someone who has continued to watch players and all that. And Tony knows how I work and the things that I want done. So Tony is going to work with him on some of those things and just teach him some of the tricks and nuances that he's done over his career."
Embree knows it is easier to be the hunter rather than the hunted. Now that Kittle has tasted success, he needs to learn how to sustain it. He will become one of the focuses of defensive game plans going forward.
"Now, when you walk in a game, everyone's going to know where 85 is at on every play," Embree said. "Everybody's going to defensively (want to) get your hands on 85. Get your hands on 85, re-route, jam, all those different things that he's going to have to face now that maybe he didn't face the entire year last year.
"So with him and Tony, I just want him to understand about how he needs to work, how he needs to continue to prepare, how do you handle certain things so that when those things arise, he's not sitting there trying to figure out something."
You can listen to the entire interview with Embree below.
