The fingers that failed Talanoa Hufanga in 2025 are the same fingers he’s pointing at himself in 2026.
Week after week, his digits splayed across his helmet in anguish after passes ticked off his hands and into the grass. Hufanga was a 200-pound whirling dervish from the moment he joined the Broncos’ secondary last year, and earned a second-team All-Pro nod for it. He also left five potential interceptions on the ground of NFL stadiums across the country, and visibly reacted to each as if he’d just been handed his entire season paycheck and accidentally dropped it down a drain.
Going back through DB tape from '25 after Talanoa Hufanga's discussion of dropped interceptions at OTAs last week. Story later.
But man, was Hufanga's self-disappointment evident on a few plays last year. A four-part portrait of four dropped picks:
— Luca Evans (@bylucaevans)
Months later, despite a full 17-game slate that exceeded anyone’s expectations for his first year in Denver, Hufanga’s hands still burn from the unfortunate memories.
“A lot of it (was) left on the board, and a lot of it was me, man,” Hufanga said last Thursday, when asked how the Broncos’ defense can be even better in 2026. “We left a lot out there in terms of interception-wise, and thatap exactly what we’re preaching this year is taking the ball away. We did well in third downs and sacks and things like that, but when we look at the lack of production, it starts with me.
“I gotta lead that better.”
Missed opportunities for turnovers
True to Hufanga’s words, last season’s Broncos had one of the stranger profiles of any dominant NFL defense in recent memory. In coordinator Vance Joseph’s third season at the helm, Denver led the league in fewest yards allowed per play and tied for fifth in NFL history in team sacks; the club also tied for the fourth-fewest turnovers forced by any defense in the NFL. Despite Joseph’s creativity and aggressiveness on situational blitzes, the Broncos thrived more on situational conservatism: they tied for the league lead in fewest red-zone touchdowns allowed (21) and finished in opponents’ third-down conversion rate (33.8%).
One needs nothing more than a handful of clips of dropped picks, though, to know Joseph’s unit still has acres of room for growth. And on the Broncos’ first day of OTAs last week, the 53-year-old veteran coordinator delivered a pointed message to his defense.
“Basically saying, ‘Itap a new year,'” cornerback Pat Surtain II recounted last week. “‘Whatever you did last year doesn’t matter now. Itap a new slate. Teams are getting better and better.
‘We gotta find a way to get better.’”
Indeed, opposing AFC West offenses have improved, after the Broncos surrendered more than 20 points in just one of six regular-season divisional matchups. The Chargers’ offense will likely see a jolt with new play-caller Mike McDaniel. Patrick Mahomes looks probable to return for Week 1 in Kansas City, with reigning Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III now in tow at running back. The Raiders have their franchise quarterback in Fernando Mendoza as well as veteran Kirk Cousins.
The Broncos’ defense, by contrast, lost starting defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers in free agency — and didn’t add a single external piece beyond a handful of rookies and special-teamer Tycen Anderson. It’s unreasonable to expect Joseph’s defense to put up 68 sacks again in 2026. And such a level of retention necessitates internal defensive progress; that begins with the Broncos’ ability to create turnovers, which Joseph and head coach Sean Payton stressed both internally and externally throughout 2025.
“That’s something,” Payton said after a December win over Kansas City, “that we’ve gotta improve on.”
The secondary’s lack of ball-production, in fact, became the subject of good-natured locker-room needling early in the year — and something slightly more, as weeks went by. The Post watched back tape of every Denver defensive pass breakup in 2025; players dropped a total of eight passes in coverage in the regular season, which would’ve jumped the Broncos’ league ranking in total interceptions from tied for 18th to tied for fifth.
Simple body language was even more telling. Surtain slammed his palms into the turf repeatedly after a fourth-quarter play in Week 7 against the Giants, when he and Ja’Quan McMillian tipped a can-of-corn pick away from each other. Two plays later, in that same game, safeties Hufanga and Brandon Jones ran smack-dab into each other and dropped another easy would-be interception from New York quarterback Jaxson Dart.
“I swear — as much as the lack of production in interceptions right now on the back-end — but we are trying to get the ball,” Hufanga reflected, a day later.
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He, for one, has a built-in excuse. He missed much of his 2024 season with San Francisco , and told reporters last week he wasn’t able to work his hands on a JUGS machine last offseason. He continued wearing a club on his wrist in 2025, too, and said his hand-eye coordination was “not great.”
“I’m going to be honest … I don’t know how I dropped all of them,” Hufanga smiled last week. “Because some of them, like — I’m being real with you, man, it dropped right in my lap. And I didn’t come out with them.
“And at the end of the day, a lot of my teammates would say, ‘You ain’t living right.’ So we gotta change that.”
This phenomenon extends beyond just picks, too. Despite a record-flirting sack season and excellent production against the run in 2025, the Broncos tied for the second-fewest fumbles recovered of any NFL defense last year.
There is no obvious external upgrade to that turnover margin, unless rookie linebacker Red Murdock manages to roll his NCAA all-time lead in forced fumbles into smashing NFL ball-carriers. Any salvation, then, lies within.
“What, realistically — we lost JFM, which is a guy that I’m gonna probably miss a lot,” Hufanga said. “But we did a really good job of being able to keep everybody intact, defensively at least.
“And so we’re super excited just to get this ball rolling.”
