Why new Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer returned to his alma mater

Carson Palmer is coming home, and he’s bringing a team of elite football minds with him.

Last week, Palmer was named the new Santa Margarita High varsity football coach, a job that for years he never envisioned. The former Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall draft pick out of USC didn’t see himself returning to the game as a coach at his alma mater, but he was drawn in by the opportunity to guide his kids.

Just as he was as a Pro Bowl quarterback, Palmer is a stickler for preparation and details, and all this is new territory for him. So he has leaned on many of his former college and NFL coaches, as well as fellow quarterbacks, to begin assembling his course of action.

“I’ve got a PhD in football,” said Palmer, 44, who retired in early 2018 after 15 seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals, Oakland Raiders and Arizona Cardinals. “You do anything for 10,000 hours and you become an expert, and I’ve got tens of thousands of hours, seven different offenses, seen every defense, played for great coordinators and learned from them. That’s what I bring, the knowledge of the game.”

He’s quick to point out these aren’t original thoughts. He’s drawing from what he learned from coaches such as Pete Carroll, Marvin Lewis, Norm Chow, Bruce Arians, Mike Zimmer, Paul Hackett and dozens of others to formulate his philosophies.

“I was in offensive meetings my senior year at SC with Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin,” he said, referring to the current head coaches at Texas and Ole Miss. “We would draw up plays and talk about stuff that wasn’t even in the game plan, and we were playing in two days. I was just learning football.”

Palmer is joining the Trinity League, which includes football powerhouses such as Mater Dei and St. John Bosco, easily among the most competitive high school leagues in the country. Finding players who fit the athletic and academic profile won’t be a simple task amid the lofty expectations.

“It might not be all smooth and just silky right off the bat,” Carroll said. “But Carson’s going to get it. He’s going to be a stud about it. I’m really excited for him.”

It’s one thing, of course, to have a mile-deep understanding of the game, but that doesn’t address the challenge of passing that on to high school players, who have limited time and experience to comprehend it.

“Offensively, I want to run a system that’s a little bit of everything,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with The Times. “I want to run the stuff I really liked running at the NFL level. It can be watered down, but these kids are sponges, man.”

Palmer spent the past season working with the Santa Margarita freshman team, which includes his son, Fletcher, a quarterback.

“When my son was in fifth, sixth grade, we were carrying three or four protections in the game plans. Because kids could learn it. If they can’t, you back off and take a little back, and you find out what the kids can absorb and learn, and what they can still play fast with.”

As varsity coach, Palmer does not intend on having a basic high school playbook.

“We’re going to run an NFL offense, no doubt,” he said. “The quarterback’s going to be under center. Our play-action game is going to be an extension of the run game. We’re going to attack people downfield. We’re not going to try to put together 13-play, 85-yard drives. We’re going to be aggressive.”

The way Palmer sees it, his best coaches were teachers.

“There’s a million coaches,” he said. “The best ones are the good teachers. You’ve got to be able to deliver information in a way that it can be received by a kid who’s a visual learner, to a reactionary learner, to a guy that learns from doing things wrong, from doing things right.

“I wasn’t a flashcard guy. I needed to go out on the field and screw it up, and then watch myself do it wrong on film. Then, boom, I had it and I never did it wrong again. Everybody’s different.”

There was a time when Palmer couldn’t get away from football soon enough.

In the immediate aftermath of retirement, he and his wife, Shaelyn, moved their four children to Ketchum, Idaho, a picturesque resort town of 2,800 people where being a fan of the three major sports means you like to hunt, fish and ski.

Mr. Throw’em became Mr. Ketchum.

“We wanted to raise our kids not in the middle of the rat race and in the mecca of sports and private coaches and club this and all-stars that,” said Palmer, who turned down network offers to be an NFL booth analyst. “We were about camping and fishing and being outside. They all ski raced, real Super-G, 50 mph downhill stuff.”

Life wasn’t all about football.

“I played football but who I am is a man of God, a father, a husband, a mentor,” he said. “I played football, but that’s not what I hang my hat on as a human.”

But the couple couldn’t hide from their DNA. Shaelyn was a scholarship soccer player. The 6-foot-5 Carson had a golden arm now relegated to hurling snowballs.

“We’ve got twins, and we moved [back to Southern California] because of them,” he said of their eldest children, Fletcher and Elle, who dreams of playing in the WNBA.

“They were about to start high school, and I just saw enough signs where I was, `Alright, they both have the drive. Who knows if they have the athletic ability, but they have that drive and that desire to compete and get better.’ So we decided to make the move and let them chase their dreams.”

The family considered moving back to San Diego but instead chose Orange County, which was comforting, familiar and …

“Kind of weird,” Palmer said. “I never would have thought my kids would go to the same high school I did. It’s been 26 years, and so much has happened. It’s odd to find yourself right back where you started.”

And high school football is so different now. Palmer is only starting to come to grips with that.

“Now you can recruit,” he said. “As soon as there’s staff turnover, this freshman class is being recruited.

“Back in the day, if you transferred, you missed an entire year. Now, there’s ways that if you transfer, you can play next week. That’s a big change.

“The grass is not always greener on the other side. I was taught at a young age that when it is greener on the other side, it’s just because there’s more manure over there.”

The job’s not just about drawing up an airtight strategy for plays to call on the field.

“Nowadays, the culture is so different,” said Chow, Palmer’s offensive coordinator at USC. “I don’t know how people coach these days. In the NFL it’s fine because you’re a pro, but with the recruiting and everything is just so different.

“I just told Carson something I learned a long time ago, which is culture before scheme. Develop that culture and you’re OK.”

Palmer is currently in the process of assembling a staff that not only can coach the players but guide him. He does not plan to lean extensively on his younger brother, Jordan, among the most respected quarterback tutors in the business. Jordan is too busy with his business and raising a young family.

“I want to hire people who can tell me yes and no, what’s doable and what’s not, what’s impossible,” Carson Palmer said. “I’ll find those right people.

“Because numbers have been down in the program, we haven’t been able to do that. So we’ve got to find new players. We’ve got to infuse the program with bodies so we can run three programs — freshman, JV and varsity — and build the system out. So when you come in as a freshman, it’s all the same terminology and verbiage. By the time you get to the varsity program you’ve been running it and repping it.”

At times, Palmer feels like the dog who finally catches the bus. He’s got the job, and now the real work begins.

He has checked in with former NFL quarterback Philip Rivers, now running a successful high school program in Alabama, and former Bengals teammate Jon Kitna, a winning high school coach in Ohio.

“There’s so much of it that’s so hard if you haven’t been doing it,” Palmer said. “But Kitna is like, `I’ve got all the templates, all the practice plans.’ All the things that would be really hard for me to come up with, he’s got the cheat sheets on. And he’s willing to share them.”

Palmer has gone back to Carroll, too, with whom he had so much success at USC.

“I talk to him often and he’s given me little tidbits that I hadn’t even thought about when I first went to him with this,” Palmer said. “He’s an open book and so vulnerable with the mistakes he made, so open with the things he’s shared. I’ve gotten a ton of stuff from him that I love.”

Said Carroll: “It’s always a thrill for me when guys call in and have new challenges coming up and they want to talk about it. I’m honored to help and I give him everything I’ve got.”

So how long does Palmer intend to coach? His older son will eventually move on, and he’s got a younger one in the pipeline.

“I’m not putting a definitive timeline on this,” he said. “I’d like to build something special in the next three years. Something unique. Something that doesn’t currently exist.”

He didn’t see himself as a coach. Now, he’s all in.

“I want to share my knowledge and the gifts I’ve been given with these kids,” he said. “So that when they leave, whether they ever put another helmet on, they’ve got something to put in their tool belt. They know the game.”

Palmer aspires to be a teacher, and though it feels strange to him, he’s a student again too.