Second-year safety Talanoa Hufanga loves his San Francisco 49ers teammates. That much was evident during his Tuesday-morning interview on KNBR. The defender knows how blessed he was to be dropped into one of the most talented defenses in the NFL when the 49ers made him a fifth-round draft pick out of USC last year.
While Hufanga has learned from veteran defensive backs like Jimmie Ward, Emmanuel Moseley, and even newcomer Charvarius Ward, there's one unexpected player who the 22-year-old safety occasionally goes to for tips—pass rusher Nick Bosa.
"He's a freak. He's a dominant force in the NFL," Hufanga said on the Murph & Mac show. "My locker is not too far away from him, so I get to see him pretty much every day. I get to communicate with him every day. But learning from him, I think it's just important just to see his work ethic. [He's] a guy that's a true consistent person that shows up. First-person-in-the-building-last-person-out type of guy. A guy that continues to work constantly on developing his tools in his toolbox."
Hufanga played 395 snaps last season. Twenty-one of those came as a pass rusher, per Pro Football Focus. He even registered a quarterback hit to go along with his three pressures and two hurries. So who better to learn how to surprise opposing quarterbacks coming off the edge than Bosa?
"And so for me, even as an edge blitzer sometimes, you continue to ask and see the different moves that he makes, and continue to try to put it in your arsenal," Hufanga continued. "Just very grateful to be around the great guys in the locker room. It's not just Bosa. We've got a hundred more guys, it feels like, in the locker room that I can go up to and continue to ask questions. But he's a prime example of one of those guys."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Hufanga below.
