49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said last week that he hopes to see defensive end Nick Bosa at practice ahead of their opener against the Steelers, but one of Bosa’s teammates says that the team has to move forward with the assumption that he won’t be there.
Safety Talanoa Hufanga acknowledges that the team is better off with Bosa in the lineup, but said there’s no point in lamenting his absence as long as his contract impasse with the team is going on.
“For us, we just got to play with who we got,” Hufanga said, via Cam Inman of the San Jose Mercury News. “We would love to have Bosa, obviously. I think that’s a no-brainer. Best defensive player in NFL, and it shows. For us, we’ve just got to prepare as if he’s not going to be here. Obviously, that’s an upper-echelon question; that’s a front-office question. And so, for me, I don’t know if I can answer anything else on that, but once he’s here, we’d love to have him.”
The 49ers enter the season with hopes of a better finish than last year’s loss in the NFC Championship Game, but not having Bosa for any portion of the season will complicate their drive for that kind of success. As of now, it looks pretty likely that they’ll be playing without him in Pittsburgh this weekend.