Hufanga Is Out, and Brandon Jones Is Now Doing This Alone

Talanoa Hufanga is out, and that's the last reliable safety Denver had behind Brandon Jones. The injury report lists Hufanga as Out; the depth chart behind Jones lists Ugo Amadi, who has logged almost no meaningful snaps this season. That's the room.

Jones has been solid — 78 tackles, a sack, an interception across 14 games — and he's been carrying the position for a while now. The analyst piece from October 14th put it plainly enough: one more injury back there and the secondary stops functioning as a unit. That injury just arrived.

What's behind Jones is Amadi and Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, neither of whom has played a meaningful snap in this secondary all season. Denver signed Taylor Rapp in the offseason specifically to hedge against this kind of collapse, but Rapp isn't in the current injury report as active at safety in any load-bearing way the grounding supports. The Broncos are, by any honest count, one Jones tweak away from a genuine crisis at the position.

The secondary has been the slow bleed of this season — Surtain, Moss, Cotton, now Hufanga. Each piece felt manageable on its own. Together they've left Jones as the only proven option in the back end, which is not a sustainable arrangement for a team that still thinks it's contending.