49ers stun Eagles in Philadelphia, but George Kittle suffers torn Achilles

PHILADELPHIA — The stadium that once ended Brock Purdy’s season may have just altered George Kittle’s career.

On the same field where Purdy tore a ligament in his throwing elbow in the 2023 NFC championship game, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback led a late, go-ahead drive to stun the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles 23–19 in an NFC wild-card game Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field. The victory, however, was overshadowed by confirmation that star tight end George Kittle tore his right Achilles tendon in the second quarter and will miss the rest of the postseason.

The 49ers, who trailed 16–10 entering the fourth quarter, advanced to the divisional round at Seattle behind Purdy’s 6-yard touchdown pass to Christian McCaffrey with just under three minutes remaining. Head coach Kyle Shanahan said after the game that team doctors told him Kittle’s injury is a torn Achilles.

“Yes, a torn Achilles,” Shanahan said at his postgame news conference. “He’s obviously out for the rest of the year. We’ll know more about the timeline going forward, but it’s a significant injury.”

Kittle, 32, went down midway through the second quarter on a 6-yard catch along the right sideline. His right leg appeared to buckle as he was tackled. He stayed on the turf in clear pain before being helped onto a cart as teammates gathered around, tapping his shoulder pads and helmet as he was driven toward the tunnel. The 49ers initially ruled him out with a right Achilles injury shortly before halftime.

The injury quieted a raucous crowd and left San Francisco without one of its most important offensive players for the rest of the game. Kittle, a seven-time Pro Bowl selection and central figure in Shanahan’s offense, had 57 receptions for 628 yards and seven touchdowns in 11 regular-season games this year.

“It’s hard to put into words what George means to us,” running back Christian McCaffrey said. “He’s the heartbeat of this team, the energy guy every day. To see him go down like that, it hurts. But I know if there’s anyone who’s going to attack a rehab and come back, it’s him.”

San Francisco’s response without Kittle underlined the stakes of the night. The 49ers opened the game with a sharp, 74-yard touchdown drive capped by a 2-yard pass from Purdy to Demarcus Robinson. Robinson, who had just 22 catches in the regular season, finished with six receptions for 111 yards in a breakout performance.

Philadelphia answered and eventually took a 13–10 halftime lead, then extended it to 16–10 late in the third quarter. The Eagles, powered by quarterback Jalen Hurts and an offense that won a title last season, appeared in control against a 49ers team that had lost its most decorated pass catcher and safety valve over the middle.

A fourth-quarter surge flips the game

But the fourth quarter belonged to San Francisco.

On the first play of the final period, the 49ers dipped into their playbook for a trick play that swung momentum. Purdy handed off, the ball was pitched to wide receiver Jauan Jennings, and Jennings rolled right before lofting a 29-yard touchdown pass to McCaffrey, who slipped behind the defense. The score gave the 49ers a 17–16 lead and silenced the home crowd.

“It’s a 12-round fight,” McCaffrey said. “We knew we had to keep swinging. There was no panic. Guys just trusted each other.”

The Eagles briefly regained the lead, 19–17, on Jake Elliott’s 33-yard field goal, but could not close out the game. Purdy, who finished 18 of 31 for 262 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions, then engineered the drive that will inevitably be framed as a personal redemption in Philadelphia.

Three years earlier, Purdy’s right elbow ligament was torn on a hit by Eagles pass rusher Haason Reddick in the NFC title game, leaving the 49ers effectively without a functioning quarterback in a 31–7 loss. On Sunday, he stood in against the rush, found Robinson and McCaffrey on critical gains, and eventually hit McCaffrey on a short route over the middle for the decisive 6-yard touchdown.

“It’s not about me,” Purdy said when asked about returning to the site of his earlier injury. “It’s about this team finding a way to win in a tough place. Obviously, there’s history here, but we just focused on this game. I’m proud of how we fought, especially after losing George.”

Defense closes out the upset

San Francisco’s defense closed the door in the final minute. With the Eagles driving inside the 49ers’ 25-yard line, Hurts faced fourth-and-11 from the 20. His pass toward the end zone was broken up by veteran linebacker Eric Kendricks, sealing the upset.

Hurts completed 20 of 35 passes for 168 yards and one touchdown with no interceptions, but Philadelphia’s offense again sputtered after halftime, gaining just 36 total yards on 16 plays in the third quarter. It was a familiar issue for an Eagles unit that struggled at times throughout the regular season under first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo.

“We didn’t do a good enough job,” head coach Nick Sirianni said. “They outplayed us in the fourth quarter. That’s on me, that’s on our staff. We had opportunities to put that game away and didn’t.”

The loss marked Philadelphia’s first home playoff defeat since the 2019 season and ended its bid to repeat as Super Bowl champions. A heated sideline exchange between wide receiver A.J. Brown and Sirianni, caught by television cameras and broken up by staffers, underscored visible frustration as the offense stalled.

San Francisco entered the game as a 4.5-point underdog and as a wild-card team after finishing 12–5 in the regular season. The Eagles went 11–6 and won the NFC East, returning to the postseason as defending champions after beating the Kansas City Chiefs in last season’s Super Bowl.

Rivalry adds another chapter — and another injury

The matchup also added a new chapter to an increasingly tense rivalry. In addition to Purdy’s 2023 injury, a 2023 regular-season meeting in Philadelphia featured a sideline confrontation between 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw and Eagles security chief Dom DiSandro that led to both being ejected. On Sunday, players again had to be separated during a pregame dust-up, with DiSandro stepping in.

This time, Purdy left the building healthy — and victorious — but the 49ers’ latest trip to Philadelphia yielded another devastating injury to a cornerstone player.

Kittle’s torn Achilles raises immediate football questions and longer-term ones. Medical timelines for NFL players returning from Achilles surgery are commonly estimated at nine to 12 months, and the injury can sap explosiveness and change-of-direction ability, particularly for skill position players in their 30s. Kittle’s game has long been defined by yards after the catch and physical blocking at the line of scrimmage.

The tight end, drafted in 2017, has spent his entire nine-year career with San Francisco and is widely regarded as one of the best of his era. He has surpassed 1,000 receiving yards in a season four times, a rare mark for his position, and entered Sunday with 595 career receptions for 8,008 yards and 52 touchdowns over 124 games. He signed a four-year, $76.4 million extension in 2025, once again making him among the highest-paid tight ends in the league.

In the short term, Shanahan said the team will turn to backups Jake Tonges and Luke Farrell at tight end as it prepares for the divisional round against the top-seeded Seattle Seahawks. The 49ers are expected to lean more heavily on their deep wide receiver group, fullback Kyle Juszczyk and McCaffrey, whose dual-threat presence carried the offense late against Philadelphia.

“We’re going to miss George in a lot of ways,” Shanahan said. “But we don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve got another game next week, and we expect the guys in that room to step up. That’s what this league is.”

In a quiet corner of the visitors’ locker room after the win, music played as players celebrated a road upset that kept their season alive. Kittle, his right leg immobilized, was still there, teammates said, offering encouragement and deflecting attention.

For the 49ers, Sunday night in Philadelphia was both a breakthrough and a warning. They finally left this stadium with the result they had long chased, but their path forward now runs without the player who has defined so much of who they are.