George Kittle

An excerpt from "The Blood and Guts: How Tight Ends Save Football." After all of his turbulence at Iowa, Kittle headed to the NFL to kick a little ass.

“A lot of guys like to play the game angry,” Kittle says, “so I try to get the guys to not be so angry and try to make them laugh. . . He realized that if he learned how to block all eleven players on the field, he’d change the calculus of the entire offense. Hockenson and why Iowa is the real Tight End U](https://www.golongtd.com/p/its-a-lifestyle-tj-hockenson-and) [Frank Wycheck and an inside look at the 'Music City Miracle'](https://www.golongtd.com/p/q-and-a-frank-wycheck-and-an-inside) [Ranking the ten best tight ends in NFL history](https://www.golongtd.com/p/lets-rank-the-ten-best-tight-ends) He applied the same amount of energy to blocking drills with offensive tackles that he did running routes with wide receivers. On his right forearm, Kittle tatted a closeup image of the Master Chief, the protagonist in Halo. Lined up in a bunch formation to the left side, Kittle caught the ball on a short out route, broke a DB’s tackle and went full Godzilla. The Master Chief could have zero weapons at his disposal and still destroy anything in his path, exactly as any tight end can feel battered and defeated late in the fourth quarter of a tied game. In the Joker’s eyes, his cause was justified — however ill-advised — and Kittle found such passion “inspiring.” So inspiring that the night before his wedding, in 2019, Kittle had the Heath Ledger version of the character tatted on his forearm in all black and white with red lips that became his new reset button. He was not surprised because of how much he had built up his mental toughness after all of the turbulence in college. He was a henchman of a blocker, too. To the naked eye, this number was inconceivable for a player hardly featured in college.