Are the 49ers Looking for a Starting Safety?

It seems they have questions or misgivings about Talanoa Hufanga's future after tearing his ACL.
Are the 49ers Looking for a Starting Safety?
Are the 49ers Looking for a Starting Safety? /
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When the offseason began, most analysts expected that the 49ers starting safeties for 2024 would be Ji'Ayir Brown and Talanoa Hufanga.

But Mike Silver recently reported that Talanoa Hufanga, who's coming off a torn ACL and has not been assured of a starting job for next season. In addition, free safety Rayshawn Jenkins met with the 49ers during free agency before ultimately signing with the Seahawks.

So are the 49ers in the market for a starting safety?

It seems they have questions or misgivings about Hufanga's future after tearing his ACL. He wasn't exactly fast before the injury, and now his lack of speed could be an even bigger issue. In addition, Hufanga could become extremely expensive next season when he's a free agent because he was an All Pro in 2022. Some team might really like him and pay him lots of money.

So don't be surprised if the 49ers spend one of their top draft picks on a safety this year. They currently have only three who definitely will make the 53-man roster -- Hufanga, Brown and George Odum. They certainly need a fourth. They could draft one and sit him for a year, then make him a starter when Hufanga leaves in free agency next year.

Or the 49ers could draft an immediate starter at safety and trade Hufanga once he fully recovers from his ACL injury.

Either way, it appears that safety has become one of the 49ers' biggest remaining needs, simply because they have just two healthy players at the position.


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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.