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FARMINGTON — There’s a new kid on the block in Davis County, with the new Farmington High joining the high school football ranks.
But a familiar face was leading the Phoenix in its first game, a road loss at Timpanogos. The face belongs to Daniel Coats, the 6-foot-3 former BYU tight end who is a Layton native.
But life wasn’t always easy for Coats — and football has been his avenue for escape.
Now he hopes to give it back at the most basic level.
“Football’s opened up so many doors for me, and it’s given me a great head start into life,” Coats said.
A Freshman All-American at BYU, Coats caught nine touchdowns as a Cougar. He then played four years in the NFL with the Bengals and Broncos. But the most fun he had playing football was back in those prep days at Northridge High School.
“The team, the coaching staff, the community; it was by far the greatest time I ever had playing,” Coats said.
Coats won back-to-back state titles with the Knights, and he was the 2001 Deseret News Mr. Football. His coach at Northridge, Fred Fernandes, became a mentor and changed his life.
“I was a stupid teenager,” he said. “I was doing all the typical wrong things that I shouldn’t have. And I needed that adult figure that I trusted, but also that I was scared of. I think there is nobody better to play that balance than a high school coach. They can tell you when you’re messing up.
"When (Fernandes) did, I listened. It helped me fix things, and it helped me get to where I wanted to go. To try to be that for somebody else is huge to me."
After four years as an assistant coach at Roy and Northridge, Farmington will be Coats' first head coaching job. And Coats is the first head coach in Farmington football history.
“High school football was the greatest time in my life, and I missed it. I wanted to be a part of it, somehow, some way,” Coats said. “It’s not enough to just sit in the stands.”
Now Coats has a chance to be a mentor, and to have the same impact on young men who look up to him — just like he once looked up to Coach Fernandes, who now coaches at Roy.
“I met him the first time, and I knew I had to play for this guy,” said Hayden Toone, Farmington’s running back. “I immediately knew that he was a guy I wanted to play for. He’s played in every level of football, so he knows what it takes to be successful. Everything he says has a bigger magnitude because he’s done it.”
Part of Coats’ challenge is bringing together a brand-new group of young players at a brand-new school.
“It’s a little harder than I thought,” he admitted. “It’s a little tougher. When you first think of no traditions — you get to do whatever you want — it sounds great at first. But then as you start creating it, there are so many nuances that you miss.
“Little things, like how you run onto the field, to what cheer you do, to how you approach the sideline and rules. It’s all these little things that you take for granted that somebody else set up. It’s exciting, but it’s been some work.”
It takes time to build a program and a winner. But Coach Coats believes success can come from this program that he is building from scratch.
“To be honest, when I first took the job, I thought they would give me a couple of years to figure things out,” he said. “But after meeting the guys and seeing what we have and the talent that we have in place, we’re ready to compete. We’re setting a higher bar for ourselves.
“We here to win … and to get a chance to wrangle this monster is exciting.”
His players also expect to win.
“I think we have all the potential in the world to go out and win,” Phoenix quarterback Wyatt Evertsen said.
“We’re kind of sick of hearing ‘first-year school’ and ‘it’s going to be hard,'" Toone added. "But we just want to win. We’ve put in the work and we’re ready to go.”
