Format: a printed book, 130 pages, shipped to you.

Youth football has a problem nobody says out loud. Most youth playbooks are high school playbooks with fewer plays in them. The plays still ask a fourth grader to read a defender, or to pull and find a linebacker in space, and then everybody acts surprised when it does not work on Saturday.

This is the Gun T built for third through ninth grade on purpose. Personnel comes first, how to figure out which kid belongs where based on what he can do right now rather than what you wish he could do. Then formations and motion, then a playbook built on rules, so a kid learns why he blocks the man he blocks instead of memorizing eleven separate assignments.

The back of the book is the part most youth coaches need most. How to organize a practice, what the teaching progression looks like, and how to divide up staff responsibilities when your staff is three dads and a grandfather. There is a section on adjusting the concepts as kids move from third grade up to ninth, so the same system grows with them instead of getting thrown out every two years.

Who it is for: youth and middle school coaches, third through ninth grade.

What it is not: it is not the high school Gun T. It is cut down deliberately. If you coach varsity, get the Gun T RPO Playbook instead.

What to do next

• Drill work and practice organization for the same age group: Youth Gun T Organization and Drill Manual
• Defense for the same kids: 34 Youth Defense
• When they move up: Gun T RPO Playbook