Talanoa Hufanga looked primed to play heavy run support.
The Broncos safety lined up near the line of scrimmage on first-and-10 in the second quarter last week against Houston.
To his left were inside linebackers Alex Singleton and Dre Greenlaw.
Denver put eight in the box against a run look from the Texans, who had back-up quarterback Davis Mills in the game.
Hufanga started to rotate out toward the middle of the field just before the snap.
Then his instincts kicked in.
Mills playfaked to running back Woody Marks. Singleton and Greenlaw both flowed hard toward the run action.
Hufanga did not.
He saw what was happening, sprinted clear across the field — from outside his right hash to the left-side numbers — as Mills booted out. Mills dumped the ball off to tight end Harrison Bryant and Hufanga stopped him in his tracks for 2 yards.
What might have been a wide-open catch-and-run went for naught.
This sort of play is once again a common occurrence for Hufanga, the 2022 All-Pro who battled injuries the past two years with San Francisco but has reestablished himself as one of the best safeties in the business over his first half-season in Denver.
He’s not just doing it as a big-hitter, either. He’s transitioned smoothly from knowing only the 49ers’ defensive scheme in the NFL to defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s man and match-heavy pass defense, he’s picked up a voluminous system, and he’s made plays from the backfield to the back end each week.
“He’s the ultimate eraser,” Joseph said Tuesday.
He’s doing a little bit of everything for the Broncos, too.
Always a forceful player against the run, Hufanga has also found himself lined up one-on-one with Colts receiver Michael Pittman in the slot. He’s played as the lone safety in the secondary above Denver’s aggressive third-down looks. He’s played in high zones and low zones. Lined up out wide, pressed on Chargers tight end Tyler Conklin. So on and so forth.
“Watching his tape in San Fran, he wasn’t asked to do a bunch of single-high coverage as far as seams or man-on-tight-end,” Joseph said. “… I was surprised in training camp. I watched him move around and cover guys, and it was surprising. Because he’s a big man. Not a small person at all. But he’s a twitchy guy who can really jump and run. So, his coverage stuff has been no issues for us.
“It’s been really a blessing to have his range over the top of zones. I mean, he’s touched two balls in two games. He’s dropped ‘em both — gotta catch those footballs. But his range is apparent in the back-end. That I didn’t see in San Fran.”
The Broncos, though, believed Hufanga could learn a new system and play in a more all-around way. They’re different players, but Denver made a similar bet in free agency a year earlier with Brandon Jones.
Now they’ve got a pair of safeties who were seen as good players in particular molds but have blossomed into an interchangeable pair.
Broncos secondary coach Jim Leonhard never saw Hufanga in person in college, but he was the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin when Hufanga was putting together a stellar run at USC.
“With (Hufanga), it goes back to then and when he was really young in the NFL and was an All-Pro early in his career,” Leonhard said. “You’re like, ‘Ok, let me watch him and see how he plays.’ He’s just so fun to watch because as a former safety, as a former defensive coordinator, you watch him and you’re like. ‘OK, you can win with this.’ In a lot of ways.
“He makes plays in the pass game, makes plays in the run game. Finesse, physicality, you name it, and it shows up on the tape. That gets you really, really excited as a coach and as a fan of the game.”
Tape and data through Denver’s first 10 games show all of that and more. Repeatedly and consistently.
Against Los Angeles, Hufanga was the single-high safety, saw Ladd McConkey use a rub route to separate from Riley Moss and pull away over the middle, read quarterback Justin Herbert’s eyes and closed 10 yards of space to break the pass up.
Against Houston, he shuffled out into a low zone, locked on to Marks and then undercut what should have been an interception.
Against the Raiders, he blasted tight end Michael Mayer at the line of scrimmage, standing him up and disrupting the timing of a tight end screen that ended in an incompletion.
He’s chased down touchdown-saving tackles. He made a heck of a play against Javonte Williams and Dallas earlier this year, once again bailing out of a rotation toward the deep middle to put his foot in the ground and calmly tackle a perfectly set up counter for a 4-yard gain.
“Anything in the run game or pass game that kind of pops and kind of gets loose, he gets it down for us,” Joseph said. “That’s the mark of a great safety. He’s got great size, great range in both run and pass game. He’s a guy that’s playing fast.”
The past two weeks, everybody’s had more coverage responsibility playing without star cornerback Pat Surtain II in uniform. In that span, according to Next Gen Stats, Hufanga’s been targeted six times and allowed two catches for 4 yards.
Entering Week 10, NGS had him allowing 0.1 yards per coverage snap, the fewest of any player in the NFL with at least 100 such snaps, and charged him with 43 total receiving yards on 18 targets. That’s in addition to racking up 36 tackles against the run, second-most of any safety in football.
“I just trust in Vance,” Hufanga said Thursday night. “Whatever he asks me to do, I’m going to do. I think that’s the cool thing about it is there’s no nerves when you’re lined up against a receiver and you’re one-on-one. You learn that, oh, you’ve got the hard down. There’s a lot of guys that have the hard down. We ask Pat to do a lot. When Pat’s out there, he’s covering the No.1 guy the whole game sometimes. It’s like, who am I to be scared on a down when I’ve got to cover a receiver?
“So, I’m so thankful to have the guys that we do and the rush that we do because that helps me on my timing, too. Very different than San Fran, I’ll tell you that, but I’m very blessed to be here.”
It’s a very different system from San Francisco, but Hufanga’s production has returned to what it looked like at the height of his powers there.
The 2021 first-round pick through 10 games this fall is on pace for 119 tackles (70 solo), both of which would outpace his production in 2022 (97 and 66, respectively). He’s already matched his career best with two sacks and nine quarterback pressures, including a fourth-and-5 blast past Raiders running back Raheem Mostert for a 9-yard sack and turnover on downs in the second quarter.
He’s had his hands on three passes the past four weeks and hasn’t come down with any of them, so the Broncos will gladly take more ball production — all seven of Hufanga’s interceptions came across 2022-23 in San Francisco — but overall they’ve got everything they could have expected from the 25-year-old safety.
“There is a physicality to him and then there’s a leadership skill-set to him — and anticipation,” head coach Sean Payton said Tuesday. “You guys have met him now and visited with him. He’s unique. He brings so much to the team aside from his skill set.
“Those are the players we are looking for, and we got a good one there.”
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