49ers superstar may have spilled the beans on new starter along offensive line

The San Francisco 49ers will have a new starting left guard this season, and tight end George Kittle may have announced who it's going to be.

Aaron Banks, a 2021 second-round pick, held down the starting left guard job for the last three seasons. He signed a four-year, $77 million contract with the Green Bay Packers in free agency and opened a vacancy on San Francisco's offensive line.

Advertisement

There's presumably going to be a battle for that starting LG job between last year's backup Ben Bartch and former starting right guard Spencer Burford. That may still be the case, but Kittle only specified one name while talking to the Athletic's Vic Tafur about some of the team's key departures from the offseason.

"Deebo will always be amazing and Aaron played really well for us," Kittle told Tafur at the American Century Championship. "But I am excited about Ben Bartch because I love him as a guy. I am just looking forward to guys taking advantage of the opportunities — because there are a lot of them. We have a lot of weapons on offense — we even have one at left tackle in Trent Williams — and we should still be able to score points.”

It wouldn't be a huge surprise if Bartch winds up starting considering how well he acquitted himself in brief action last year. Perhaps Kittle did only name him because of a friendship between the pair. However, Bartch appears to be the frontrunner for the job going into camp and Kittle may have let slip that there's no battle anticipated at left guard.

Bartch re-signed with San Francisco this offseason on a one-year, $1.3 million deal with the club. He will be entering his sixth season after joining the NFL in 2020 as a fourth-round pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars out of Saint John's University in Minnesota. In five seasons he has played in 49 games with 22 starts. He has two starts since signing with San Francisco midway through the 2023 campaign. Both of those came last season.