USA Football Senior Manager of Education and Engagement Andy Ryland recently volunteered to be an assistant coach for his son's youth football team. A former Penn State linebacker and member of the U.S. Men’s Rugby National Team, Ryland is an expert on tackling and preparation for contact with athletes, consistent with USA Football's Football Development Model. He also assists coaches of all sports in areas of drill design and skill development. This series of journal entries chronicles his family's 2023 youth football experience. 

We’re back at it with season two of Journal of a Youth Coach, fourth-grade football. Just to set the stage and offer some context, I wanted to describe how this league operates in terms of organization, growth and teams. 

To start, our league follows some very nice FDM principles and a true, staged building block approach to football. Youngsters K-2 play in the flag division, non-contact only. Third grade, my family’s first year of organized football that we covered last year, brings in contact and Rookie Tackle. The league we participate in plays 7-on-7 with three linemen and a 40-yard, one way field (Jamboree/scrimmage style) for third grade.  

I personally love this step as the smaller number of players and smaller field make the game more manageable cognitively for the kids. Plus there are limited formations and defenses the focus is blocking, tackling, running and execution, not scheme. This helps set a great foundation.   

In the fourth grade, this year, the kids will move to 9-on-9 and a 60-yard two-way field.   

At USA Football, we have pushed hard for progressions and the game growing with the kids via these types of game expansion models and pathways. However, we have resisted a one-size fits all recommendation approach, as each community is different (size, number, field space, logistics etc.).   

This league has taken our principles and created a multi-stage approach that fits them. What I like and credit them most with is you can see that it’s thought out, well planned and has logical flow to make the game bigger, more complicated and more intense each step along the way. This allows kids time to adjust, learn at each step and “grow into the game.” 

As a coach, this means we must teach two new positions: offensive tackle and defensive end. While the positions and their techniques are not so much the problem, it certainly adds some logistics and organization to formations, substitutions and alignments. These are things you take for granted in upper levels but certainly things to think about with nine- and ten-year-olds. 

Camp 

Before the start of the season, our league hosts a two-week, five-practice camp. It is part soft start, part evaluation and part unified core skills. Besides some of the humorous responses of over eager coaches just excited to be back out coaching football, it was pretty low key and instructional. 

It’s an attempt at a unified technique approach. All groups do the same drill and coaches try to use the same language. The groups are created by weight, the ten-to-15 lightest kids in group one, on and on up to the 15 heaviest kids in group ten. Because final teams are a mix of size and weights, this allows every player to get coached by different coaches (from last year or who will be their coach this year) as it’s randomly assigned. This is good for fostering a football community.  

They do progress to contact quick for my taste in the first two days, but they have a vision. The last day of camp is an evaluation of blocking and tackling in a small space one-on-one drill. The reason for this evaluation is to help build even teams. 

I found the way the league does teams super interesting. Once players are slotted by weight group, each weight group is ranked by their blocking, tackling and movement/speed drills.  Teams are generated by a computer-based snake draft, not coaches picking. Based on evaluation/weight scores, all teams should be even. Coaches don’t even get a say on what team they get. Once the teams are created by the computer, coaches pick a number out of a hat. This number is correlated to a full, already selected team. 

I think I like that. It’s just about coaching some kids in the community, not scouting and stacking teams. The end of the year all-stars can be for that – even if I don’t think it’s much needed at this age. I also love the idea of even teams based on group evaluations and community input.  

The best way to actually get better is to challenge yourself and play against good competition; competition that stretches you but is managed. This is best accomplished with even teams. Wining big sounds great, but it actually doesn’t develop the player as much as spreading out the talent, having to compete each week and learning to play, battle, win….and lose.