Monday night's preseason game will feature 39-year-old San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on one sideline and 60-year-old Denver Broncos coach Vic Fangio on the other. Shanahan is seen as part of the new younger wave of coaches taking over the NFL. He blasts music during his practices and named his son, Carter, after rapper Lil Wayne.
Fangio, a defensive mastermind who was once a coordinator with the 49ers, is just six years younger than Shanahan's father, former NFL coach Mike Shanahan, and doesn't care for music during practices.
The two have great respect for one another but might have slightly different views on specific NFL topics like if preseason games are even necessary. Fans don't enjoy paying NFL prices to watch the starters play for two or three drives. The NFL would prefer to replace a couple of them with more regular-season games, not out of the kindness of its corporate heart, but to make more money.
Most teams have four preseason games on their schedule while two teams have to play in five thanks to the annual Hall of Fame game. The Broncos are one of those two teams with five.
Is that too much? Probably. While Shanahan would prefer none compared to four, Fangio sees the value in exhibition games in preparing NFL teams for the regular season. He was asked on Friday which is more beneficial, joint practices like the two between the 49ers and Broncos, or Monday night's preseason game between the two teams.
"We need them both," Fangio said. "As you see, nobody's tackling, okay? Tackling is a big part of the game, so you need the games."
Fangio turned to the reporter who presented the question and asked if he was part of the growing movement to get rid of the preseason. He said he was not, but maybe Shanahan would be interested in signing up.
Now, in Fangio's defense, he wasn't explicitly asked if he felt four or five games were necessary. Maybe he would be open to reducing the number of preseason matchups. I don't know.
What I do know is how Shanahan feels about the topic. He was asked on August 8 if he felt four preseason games were needed.
"You absolutely don't need four preseason games," Shanahan responded. "I'd rather have zero than four, preferably I'd like two. One to evaluate the people trying to make the team and then just one to knock a little rust off."
Shanahan went on to say that he finds practices, especially joint ones like the 49ers are currently taking part in with the Broncos, to be much more valuable. He elaborated more during a KNBR interview on Tuesday.
"It's too hard of a game to play, and these players are too important that when you lose guys, it changes a lot of what you do, and it makes it a lot harder to be successful," Shanahan said on-air. "You can't just go get players. They're just not available. You're only allowed 53 on a roster. When your get guys banged up in the preseason, if they can't go on IR, you can't put them back on PUP, so they count on your active roster even though they might not be able to play until Week 6.
"It's a very stressful thing, but I also know the only way you get better at football is practicing and playing football. So that's what we try to do as much as possible. If I had an ideal situation, I'd like one game to kind of get our guys out there, get them to tackle just a little bit because I don't want to do that in practice.
"Then maybe one game to have those last 10 guys, who you're trying to get the bottom 10 on the roster, just to figure out who the game's not too big for, and stuff like that."
Shanahan admitted that the offseason rules are what makes things difficult in preparing a team. The coaches are only allowed so much time with their players and there are rigid rules in place, which are meant to protect the players from being overworked.
Shanahan believes those rules were put into place because there were a few coaches who used to go overboard and abuse their players' time.
"Now, there's players here who actually want to work, and they're actually not allowed to," Shanahan added. "This is our job. You should be allowed to work at your job."
Shanahan added, "You end up hurting your players. We're away for a month and guys can come up out here and work out with us but they're not allowed to use a football. So who's going to come up and work with the quarterbacks? They have to go to San Jose State to throw routes. They lift here in the morning, but then they go over there to throw routes."
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