Vic Fangio Coached While Passing A Kidney Stone

Vic Fangio has been coaching football at the college and pro level for 40 years, and through all that time he’s never held a head coaching position, until this season. Fangio was hired to be the head coach of the Denver Broncos during the offseason, and last night’s preseason game against the Falcons was his first shot at patrolling the sideline of an NFL game as The Big Guy In Charge. Perhaps that 40 years of waiting had something to do with Fangio deciding to make his head coaching debut despite dealing with a kidney stone.

Before the game started, reports began in trickle that despite being taken to the hospital for treatment of the stone, Fangio would be at the game anyway.

Fangio got through the game, a 14-10 Broncos win, without showing any noticeable ill effects from the glob of minerals terrorizing his pee system. A Deadspin staffer who shall remain anonymous and is intimately familiar with the pain that can be caused by kidney stones that there’s no way Fangio could have coached last night without being “percosetted out the wazoo.” Perhaps that explains his lighthearted postgame press conference:

At the end of the season, Fangio will be able to tell us if passing a kidney stone is more unpleasant than watching Joe Flacco throw passes every week.