Playing music during practice has become increasingly en vogue in the NFL over the past several years. Made most popular by the Seattle Seahawks' Pete Carroll, coaches like Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs and Dan Quinn of the Atlanta Falcons, among many others, now blast music over the loud speakers at practice, too.
A rookie head coach who's going against the trend? The Denver Broncos' Vic Fangio, who invoked his tenure as a position coach to justify his no-music policy.
“Anybody who has been a position coach, or assistant coach, they don’t like the music,” he said, per Mike Klis of 9 News. “It makes it hard to talk to your guys. I don’t see the benefit of having music out there. I was an assistant coach, and I don’t want to drum out the noise to talk to my players.”
There's a gameday benefit to playing music at practice, too – the simulation of crowd noise, a use that hasn't persuaded Fangio nonetheless. When the Broncos feel compelled to prepare for the opposing team's crowd at practice, they'll just pump in artificial crowd noise rather than blaring music.
“When it goes to the point where we need to simulate crowd noise in practice, which we will do, it will be noise,” Fangio said. “It won’t be music. It will be noise. That’s what it is in the game. Noise by definition sounds annoying. Music sounds nice so if we have to deal with noise let’s deal with noise.”
Fangio, 60, has no prior head-coaching experience at the NBA or NCAA levels.
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