Vic Fangio is a name that San Francisco 49ers fans know all too well. He was the team's defensive coordinator during the Jim Harbaugh era and currently holds the same position with the 49ers' next opponent – the Chicago Bears.
Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo will be making his third career NFL start and first within 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan's offense. Is Garoppolo, who is in his fourth NFL season, at a disadvantage going against a defensive coordinator like Fangio?
"He doesn't have a lot of experience with all of the plays that we're doing," Shanahan said on Friday. "You'd love to give him that and give him every single rep. When someone (like Fangio) does do a ton of coverages and fronts and stuff, you can't get him every single rep versus every single look.
"When you're going against Seattle, it's pretty easy because you're going to get mainly Cover 3, so you can rep that and some Single-Safety Man. Now, you don't totally know but hope you get him the looks that you repped during the week. But it can help both teams. When you do a lot of stuff, that's hard for them also. They're not as on everything. So you see how it comes.
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"They're going to have their plays where you call a play where it's not a good look, and they got you. Then you hope you call one where it's right. What do you do on the bad ones? Do you survive it? Do you turn it over? Or do you live for another down?"
With Garoppolo starting, his specific set of plays has expanded from what it was over past weeks.
"He knows the whole game plan now," Shanahan said. "The other was, 'Hey, don't try to get the whole thing down. Get half of it down,' because we knew C.J. [Beathard] was playing. If he needed to come in the game because of injury at some time, we'll go to your package that you've kind of isolated this week. Now we know we're going with him for the whole game, and so the whole game plan, he knows."
Shanahan went on to explain that the coaching staff had to find a healthy balance between the number of plays in the game plan and not having plays outside of Garoppolo's comfort level.
"We feel confident going into this game we have enough that he is confident in," Shanahan continued. "That we can go whatever direction that presents itself."
Garoppolo will continue to wear his wristband, which has numbered plays on it. However, it is more of a safety net for the quarterback rather than a crutch.
"You need it there in case of an emergency, some of the longer play calls and stuff like that," Shanahan said.
The 49ers head coach can speak to his quarterback until the play clock hits 15 seconds and communications are cut off, per league rules. Having the wristband will help if Shanahan needs to get a play to Garoppolo quickly.
