About 10 minutes before the end of practice Friday, Vic Fangio brought his players together in a team-wide huddle for the start of something new. When the players dispersed to their respective sidelines, the first offense and defense lined up at the goal line and went live, with full tackling.



The brief team period was reserved for the end of practice, and Fangio said completely live periods (quarterbacks are still spared, of course) have to be limited to preserve players’ health ahead of the regular season.



“Our interior play I’d like to think is pretty damn close to game-like all the time,” Fangio said. “When you do add the element of tackling, it’s a little bit more. But I don’t think it totally affects the O-line and D-line. It affects them in that they have to go tackle somebody, but you can’t do it all the time.



“In all my years in the NFL, I’ve only been one place, one time where there was...