Desert Valley Blitz
Welcome to Desert Valley Blitz – the podcast dedicated to spotlighting our local tackle football scene. From the youth leagues to Friday night lights and everything in between, we’re bringing you the stories, players, and coaches that make the desert gridiron special.
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Desert Valley Blitz
EP#1-From Player to Coach: Why we got into coaching football??
Ever wondered what football looks like through a coach's eyes? Desert Valley Blitz hosts Coach Bobby and Coach Josh pull back the curtain on their decades of coaching experience in the Coachella Valley, revealing how the game transforms when you're calling the plays instead of making them.
From their humble beginnings as young coaches (Josh was just 20 when he joined La Quinta's championship staff, while Bobby started at 22 with Indio), they share candid stories about learning on the job. "My coaching brain turned on," Josh explains, describing how even watching Sunday football became an exercise in analyzing schemes and techniques. Bobby reflects on his years coordinating defense at Indio during rebuilding seasons, where strategic innovation became essential when facing talent disadvantages.
The conversation dives deep into what makes football the ultimate teaching tool. Unlike basketball where a single superstar can dominate, football demands synchronized execution across all positions. This requirement for collective responsibility builds character, accountability, and community connection that extends far beyond the field. Both coaches highlight the "chess match" that unfolds between coordinators during games – a strategic dimension most spectators never notice as they follow only the ball while coaches analyze gap responsibilities, leverage techniques, and defensive rotations.
Desert Valley Blitz aims to strengthen connections across desert football programs by highlighting matchups, breaking down film, and celebrating coaching excellence throughout the valley. Whether you're a player, parent, coach or fan, join us as we spotlight the upcoming season, from La Quinta's challenging opener at Yucca Valley to identifying which program might become this year's surprise contender. Send us your game film and coaching strategies – we're building something special for desert football, and we want you to be part of it!
#football #footballcoaching #highschoolfootball #coachellavalley #indiohighschool #laquintahighschool
What is going on everyone? Welcome to Desert Valley Blitz. I'm Coach Bobby, here with my co-host, coach Josh, and welcome to the Blitz. All right, coach Josh. So I know you have a. You have an extensive background in the football game. You kind of want to tell me. I know where you started, but how? Where'd you start with the love of the football?
Speaker 2:Ah shoot, I mean, I've been playing football since I was young boys and girls some days, but I think where, like my coaching, uh like brain turned on, is when, uh, you know, armstrong came and asked me after I was done playing, but I was like, all right, I'll coach, and I've never said no to Armstrong ever. So I showed up and just start coaching, just like I'm a players coach, you know. And that year we had some good kids and it was cool, just like kind of playing vicariously through them.
Speaker 1:And how old were you at this time? I was 20. Wow. So you weren't even older than the players right.
Speaker 2:No, I was right there. You were like the same age. They were freshmen when I was senior. When I went back, wow, okay, that's a tough job because your age is so close.
Speaker 1:It's hard to like have discipline. It is, it is.
Speaker 2:But I think they looked up to me and just enough to respect me and go all, Because at that time, you know, La Quinta was so new, we hadn't had, like, players come back after playing somewhere else, you know Right. And yeah, they listened and, man, I couldn't have had a better squad. I mean, we did good that year and what year was this 2000.
Speaker 1:So these are your championship CIF ones. You were on those coaches' staff as a 20-year-old Yep. A championship. One Couldn, couldn't even drink with the coaches.
Speaker 2:Afterwards I had to go drink some Dr Pepper, wow.
Speaker 1:But I mean, you guys had some really great players too, right yeah. Like Jeff Webb, Roger Collins, Sammy Chavez.
Speaker 2:You know, I'll even throw like Jesse Rilla out there. We had some guys that can play Joe Giannone. Some legends, man.
Speaker 1:Some legends that went on to the next level.
Speaker 2:It was a good squad. That's awesome man.
Speaker 1:Some legends that went on to the next level. That's awesome, man. So you started off relatively I would say lucky kind of having a crew like that to coach because you have great players, You're a great coach. I mean, it makes you a much better coach. So after that, what was kind of the what was the next couple of steps in your coaching career after that?
Speaker 2:Well, I actually, after I mean, that was a long season and I happened to that point I'd been playing football my whole life, uh, college and then, um, that long season of coaching, I was like man, I need a break. So I took a break for a few years, um, and then I ended up coming back. Let's see if I can remember this right. My brother got a job at desert hot springs um a few years after that, maybe 10 years after that.
Speaker 2:I think it was a long you've been out of the game 10 years, yeah, and then I come back and then it's just frosh soft, I'm doing defense, but then I'm like all right, this is kind of fun, but isn't isn't frosh soft and jv, the funnest though it is there's no pressure man, no pressure you just have fun with those kids yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2:You get to try some stuff and as a coach, you want, you have all these ideas. You're like I should know, I want to do it this way, this way, this way. Well, at those frosh soft levels, you get to try it your way a little bit and you'll quickly find out, man, a lot of your ideas don't work. So you have to start learning from some of the OGs that kind of know what they're doing. And, yeah, I think the best thing I did was start that coaching brain on sold young, what I mean by that. I started looking at the game as a coach. So even though I was watching football on sunday and saturday, I was dissecting how, how, how they're doing that, and and if I didn't start coaching, I don't think I would have looked at the game, even though I wasn't coaching. Um, I was looking at the game through a coach.
Speaker 1:So it takes you to a whole different level. Yeah, I've always been told that I'm no fun to watch football with anymore because I'm always looking at fronts and blitzes and coverages. And people are like dude, you take the fun out of it, man. Just like. Let me enjoy my team and my touchdown. I'm like you know, I don't care what the backside backer is doing on that run play. So it does kind of ruin it for everybody else around you. But for us coaches it's very like a.
Speaker 2:It's fun, it's a detail-oriented thing, man, it's fun watching someone run a 3-3 stack or how they attack it. It really is a fun, fun game when you get down into it, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the ultimate team game too.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's a lot of things that we can teach through that game to young men to become young men, you know it's like you can't.
Speaker 1:Just, it's not like basketball where you have one superstar that can go out there and just dominate a game like Ron or MJ, If you have the best running back in the world in the NFL, if you don't got no line, if you don't work, yeah, it's not gonna, it's not gonna matter, Right? I mean, he's going to be tackled for a loss and you know so. It's just the ultimate team game and that's what the one thing I love about the game. You got to learn how to do your job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to work as a team in order to be successful, hold each other accountable, yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you're not working as a unit, it doesn't matter, you know. So there's a lot of lessons in life. That or how to practice. Yeah, absolutely, how to practice is an art right.
Speaker 2:You got to approach practice right and yeah. So after that I coached at DHS for, I think, just one year, and then I went back to La Quinta for a little bit and then one more year I bounced back to DHS because I was living in Morongo Valley, so DHS was kind of close. And then the last three years I've been at La Quinta, so I guess that would be my whole career. That's your coaching lineage, right there. Yeah, so to speak. So how about you?
Speaker 1:You were career. That's your coaching lineage right there, yeah, so to speak. So how about you? You, you were just at indio, uh, yeah, I mean started. I started really when I was a player. So when I was a player, I had a coach tell me hey, because I used to call the defensive plays as a as a linebacker, so I had a coach.
Speaker 1:How fun was that it was awesome, man it was. It was really easy then, though. It was only like three, three, it's only like three plays. It was the the 90s man, we weren't real sophisticated Cover threes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't a ton of stuff, man.
Speaker 1:Our playbook was really small in high school, Still that's pretty cool though, yeah, but I had a coach that was really good, and he told me hey, you're a coach on the field when you graduate, because I know you're going to college. If you want a job, I got a job for you. So here I was, you know, 22 years old.
Speaker 2:So you're young too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 22 years old coming and I didn't have. I was like I was come moving back down here because it's cheaper to live with my, you know, to try and find a, you know, find your footing as a young man. And so I took that job, coached the jv, and it was fun, man, yeah, it was fun, I mean it was. It was like I had to learn a lot like I. I was a great front guy because I was a linebacker and defensive end as a player and I had to learn back.
Speaker 1:I had to learn the backside so I, I did the opposite.
Speaker 2:I learned the backside and then, uh, I had to learn the, the, you know, the stunts and the box and and the techniques, and yeah, yeah so so I I took that on, I learned the, I learned the back end.
Speaker 1:Well enough for JV, at least right yeah, yeah, so um, and then a couple years into that I got the call end well enough for JV at least, right, yeah, yeah. And then a couple years into that, I got the call to come up and be the varsity coordinator at Indio High School. So I did that for three, four years, three, four years until about 2016. So I mean so at Indio. You know we were that's when Shadow Hills had opened, so there was a real lack of real good varsity players at that time. So we took our beatings, but I really learned how to coach and adjust because you had to.
Speaker 1:You had to, Otherwise you're going to lose 60 to nothing every game if you don't out. You had to out-coach the other staffs just to stay in the game in those situations because you just didn't have the horses.
Speaker 2:I've been in those games.
Speaker 1:Yeah, A hundred percent you just didn't have guys, that you didn't have a lot of talent, man. So I mean, shout out to the guys that played with me back then, we, we, we tried, we, I was proud of those kids, we did some good things. But you know, it was sometimes, sometimes it was really hard, you know, just not to start to rebuild. So did that till 2016. My son started to kind of grow up and start playing football himself and so, you know, I made the decision at that point Well, we, actually the head coach, got fired and then there were some things. So you know we made the decision at that point to kind of go and coach my son.
Speaker 2:You know have some fun Flag football man. That's what I'm doing right now.
Speaker 1:Flag football man. So we started in flag and uh, now we're, now we're, he's got moved on to tackle, so we're doing tackles. I'll be our last year in youth football and uh, yeah, so I've I've been doing this a long time, so it's been, it's been real fun. I've not. There's a lot of things I haven't. I've seen a lot of things in this game. You know it's been, it's been a long journey, but I'm really excited to kind of come in here with you and just pivot, yeah, pivot.
Speaker 1:Still be involved, but in a different way. You know, I think, I think we, I want to you know, instead of just honing in on what the whole Valley's doing, and and it's fun to talk about.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a, it's, it's a fantastic sport. I mean high school. To me it's the best form of football. I mean college. It gets really. It's almost like a job in NFL. And then especially with the new money involved with college, I think it might be the last kind of little pure part, like a pure way to play the game and you're just playing for your school?
Speaker 2:yeah, you're not. You know what I mean. Yeah, and you feel that on on friday nights you get on that sideline that band's playing communities and stands slowly starting to fill up man, there's this energy in the air. You can't beat it, man.
Speaker 1:I I love it it's fun, man, it's fun, and it's one of the few truly community-based things that we got left, even Even though now that is changing as well, and I'm sure you've seen that. I know the community teams are maybe something of the past, with money coming into high school sports. Now I know it's crazy, man, it's crazy, it's the Wild West and you know we're just all a part of it. But you know there's still a lot of good that those teams can do for their community. Yeah, you know, especially if you got a good, you got a good team, then the community really jumps behind it All of a sudden, yeah, all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:Everybody's a fan and everybody, everybody wants to jump on the battle wagon Winning fixes everything, that's life, man, that's not just football, that's life, you know.
Speaker 1:Everyone wants to be involved, so yeah, yeah, I think you know this year for me is just going to be, uh, it's going to be more of doing this and talking about high school. Uh, I still am coaching my son's team every saturday. Um, we're gonna, we're gonna be running that back um on saturdays, but you know, I'm gonna be a fan and just talk about the game and that's what I'm kind of looking forward to what's your favorite thing to coach, like, like.
Speaker 2:Is there a technique? Is there an aspect to it which I love coaching linebackers just because I was a linebacker for my whole career, yeah.
Speaker 1:So inside, outside, I played defensive. They moved me to defensive end in certain situations so I knew some leverage techniques out there to kind of the rush, yeah, yeah, so I'm just, uh, linebackers have always been the funnest thing for me to teach. I like coaching. The front set, front seven was always like I knew. When I, even as a young coach, like if somebody like, hey, we're having problems with the front seven, or Front seven was always like I knew when I, even as a young coach, like if somebody like, hey, we're having problems with the front seven or stopping the run, I had some. I had some ideas right off the top, because that's just when I grew up, that's where I played. You know I was in inside somewhere stopping the run somewhere. You know natural, but I do. I do enjoy at this point calling defense. I think it's. It's a, it's a chess match, you know, even like so I've been I'm used to the varsity chess match which is ongoing. You know you're looking at film during game. Now you're, yeah, you're making online.
Speaker 2:You know immediate adjustments gotta have a good kid on the field that knows what's going on.
Speaker 1:You can talk right and I do kind of miss that on the youth level, because on the youth level we don't have as much tools, you know. So, you the adjustment, you do, I, I do a lot in your head. I do yeah I do make adjustments sometimes, but we don't have a lot of practice time so you don't have a ton in and also it's like if you make a few too many adjustments on that level, it's counterproductive in your head.
Speaker 2:You know it'll work, but yeah, the kids aren't going to pick it up. Yeah, and that's something's something I had to learn. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:My first year we made way too many adjustments and we kind of suffered for it.
Speaker 2:So I kind of dialed it back If you don't practice it, you can't do it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I learned it too.
Speaker 1:And on the youth game, you get one day of defensive practice to prepare to put a whole game plan in which is nothing, and be at that practice, you know. So then you're just, you're really not making it.
Speaker 2:You're really, you're really not making any. You're trying to have a practice before the game. You're hey, you, you right.
Speaker 1:So that is one thing, and one aspect about the high school game that I kind of miss is that the chess match within the game that people don't like you, somebody watching would never even know what's going on. But between the coordinators there's always that chess match.
Speaker 2:There's always that you know you have an idea what you have to stop, and then they have the counter. Exactly what are they going to do if they do get stopped?
Speaker 1:you got to have a, b, c, d ready to go. You know all these, all these adjustments ready to go and you've had to practice it, so you know. That's the beautiful thing about the game and something that, like only us coaches would really know because watching the game from the stand. You know. You don't know that. You know where. You know where theers shooting over, shooting the B gap.
Speaker 2:They're just watching where the ball is Exactly. Who has the ball they're, they're just their eyes are, but we're watching. You know the backside and what's happening, absolutely A little bit more detailed, yeah, but that's why we're football nerds.
Speaker 1:That's why we can come in here and talk for an hour about you know. So are you excited about coming in here and talking about not just La Quinta this year, but you're going? To have to talk about some other teams.
Speaker 2:I love La Quinta. You know that's my school. I went. You know I started that party off a long time ago and it was fun to watch the story go on and how good they got. And I went back to help as much as I can the last three years. And just similar to you, my son's getting to that age where you know he wants some attention too. I can't be gone all the time coaching and so I had to make that choice. So next couple years I'm going to be helping him but I'm going to go back. But I love desert football too. I remember game of the week when I was a kid, waking up watching Palm Desert play, you know indio on saturday mornings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was on tv, remember, these kids don't know how cool the experience that was it was a live broadcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had uh sports, they had play-by-play, they had replay. Dude, you couldn't wait for that game they're interviewing players after the game.
Speaker 1:We used to fight over that like who was going gonna get that?
Speaker 2:interview. You know we wanted to be on tv. You know it was that little guy, remember that guy, uh, but yeah, I I don't know why they don't bring that back, but yeah, I just loved, you know, I just it's the best, so yeah yeah, I'm excited.
Speaker 1:I think uh, game of the weeks are definitely something that we're gonna be paying attention to, yeah, and trying to highlight um, because there going to be some even week one. I think we got some good matchups coming up right.
Speaker 2:I mean I got La Quinta, I mean that's all. I mean that's going to be a tough game for La Quinta man, la Quinta's.
Speaker 1:La Quinta's. La Quinta's down one of their superstar running backs, at least for the first half of the season. So, and Yucca's.
Speaker 2:It's always a tough and they're going up to Yucca right. They got a good coaching staff up there, man, they do it right and they got a good program.
Speaker 1:Tough kids and they're going up to Yucca right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anytime you go on the road, man, sometimes you're.
Speaker 2:It's nice and cool up there.
Speaker 1:Sometimes games don't travel on the bus sometimes. Sometimes, you leave that game at home. So beware when you jump in. Have no real identity at that point. So interesting matchup week one. But and we're going to be here to kind of follow those we get closer to.
Speaker 2:We can talk about it more and, yeah, we'll know, but actually we'll learn a lot week one. I mean we really have, we have an idea how good teams are going to be, but it always switches every year.
Speaker 1:I mean there'll be some team that comes out of nowhere, like desert hot springs last year came out of nowhere. Nobody expected them to do anything and they made a nice run. Shout out to the golden eagles, they did. They did their thing last year and I think there's going to be another team, probably that we're not even on our radar yeah, that's gonna.
Speaker 2:That's gonna come out, man a coach, it's fun.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so we're gonna be here for the whole ride this year and, um, I'm excited take it week by week yeah, I'm excited it's gonna be, I think, and also, you know so um game coaches that do want to be featured on here. You know, we're two old coaches and we know how to, you know, break down some films. So, if you, if yeah, come, come, send us some films so we can talk about your team and your coaches and your players.
Speaker 2:And I want to learn more. I want to learn from different coaches how they do things, how they structure practice. It could be anything that you like to coach. Come talk about it, man, because I want to learn and absorb everything. I might not be coaching this year, but my coaching brain is always going, man, and I'm going to try to get better because I am am going to coach again. So, yeah, come, come talk shop.
Speaker 1:Come help us build that community. Come help us build that community down here of football coaches and that football community which I think is really lacking. Being in the being in that community for 20 years. We got to get out of that mindset of you know, we're only competition.
Speaker 2:We're actually partners, we're training partners, we're actually partners.
Speaker 1:If you think about it, the guy you're trying to beat every weekend is actually your partner in this thing, because without him there's no you. So let's you know, let's build a community together. Yeah, when we get on the field against each other, we're trying to kick each other's butts.
Speaker 2:But after that we should, you know, come together and kind of build this community. When I was a kid I hated palm desert man. That was the game I wanted to win. I woke up there's a sign on my yard telling me how bad I sucked and I wanted to beat those guys. But fast forward, you know, 20, 25 years, whatever it's been. I see those guys out in the desert it's all love, it's all of them they remember how good I was at one time.
Speaker 2:And and then we'll talk about plays hey, remember when you blew me up. Remember when you did this. Those guys are going to be the ones that remember how good you were. So I know, when you're young it's tough to get out of that mindset. But take it from an older head. Those guys will remember you who you are.
Speaker 1:I mean, I grew up hating La Quinta, and look at me, now I'm sitting next to a. Blackhawk. My son is a Blackhawk. I got La Quinta gear in my studio. I mean. Times have changed people and I've kind of evolved and I want to support all local people that are doing a good job out there. So if you want to come join this party, send us a DM, put something in the comments.
Speaker 2:Like I said, we're willing to talk to everybody hopefully we can even show some films, maybe some little clips here and there, just to talk about the X's and O's, talk about some plays. Maybe someone's really good at running a post, or someone's really good at running power, or you know we've got an excellent producer, producer Danny.
Speaker 1:he's going to be throwing some game clips into the show. Yeah, you know we're going to do it, big man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to do it big. So I'm excited, man, you excited, I'm really excited.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, everybody out there, you know the routine Like, subscribe and follow, and we'll be back on Desert Valley Blitz. See ya, thank you.