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San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle decided to turn the tables on the media to open up his press conference after Wednesday’s training camp by roasting their weak sneaker game.
Kittle, one of the NFL’s most entertaining players and a very serious sneaker aficionado, apparently had seen enough of the sad kicks that reporters showed up with day after day at camp and let them know it.
“You guys are out there at every practice, you guys watch us all the time,” George Kittle began his scolding. “But there’s a special teams period where I catch footballs and I can observe you guys. And you guys really need to up your sneaker game. It’s absolutely atrocious.
“I got some Vomeros, those are fire,” he continued while pointing to one of the media members on his right.
“And Grant [Cohn] wears Vans every single day. New Balances? They look like Vans,” Kittle said, mixing it up with Cohn when he tried correcting him. “Yeah, those are Vans. It’s okay. But, you wear those every day so I need you to switch those up.
“But I observe all your guys’ shoes, and I am disappointed in you guys as a community. So we could up those, please.
“It’s year eight, guys. Let’s figure this out together.
“Okay now, it’s all you guys,” Kittle concluded, turning the floor over the reporters.
"You guys need to up your sneaker game. It's absolutely atrocious."
George Kittle roasted reporters covering the 49ers 😂 pic.twitter.com/OyPostkSk4
— 49ers on NBCS (@NBCS49ers) August 14, 2024
While George Kittle was joking around, there was probably more than a little truth to what he was saying. As anyone who watched the Netflix documentary Receiver knows, he takes his shoe game so seriously that his wife Claire hung some of his sneakers from the ceiling as decorations and had an Air Jordan sneaker cake made to celebrate his birthday.
In January of 2023, he allowed the 49ers media team to shoot a video of his sneaker closet. He’s not playing around.