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Product Description

NFL Head Coach is for the hardcore football fan who tells himself that if he were in charge of the team, he'd take them all the way to the Super Bowl. It's got the strategy and realism that real fans crave, combined with easy-to-use controls and assistance for more casual fans. It's the first 3D strategy sports game that challenges you to build and manage every aspect of a football team, from the ground up. Try to build a winning organization, year after year!

Customer Reviews:

• A Nice Start
  If you liked playing Madden, but always wanted to do more "coach work", this game is probably for you. It is heavy on the strategy and realism end however, which may be more than most Madden simers can handle.
  
  Personally I really enjoy the game. There is a lot to do here, and they do a good job of putting you in the coach's seat. Being a coach is being a man of details, and as you can see some reviewers found those details to be a little tedious.
  There is certainly room for improvement. The team roster interface could be a little cleaner and easier to navigate. They certainly could add a touch more of an RPG element to the coach's life, and more meaningful dialog between coaches and players.
  
  Some of the complaints here are not really valid. For example, you CAN sim through the draft until your next pick, and it is clearly marked on the screen. Granted the use of the [ and ] keys for such actions can be questioned.
  
  Overall we have a good but not great product, as long as you can accept that it is very detailed coach simulation and not the "light strategy" of Madden siming. Tiburon is well known for improving their products on subsequent tries. Improved graphivs and interface would go a long ways to making next year's edition (EA has not announced one yet) better....more info
• This game blows
  I love strategy simulation games. One of the best is Football Manager 2006 (a soccer simulation) as it is one of a long line of great management games, and I play it religiously. NFL Head Coach, though, stinks on ice. EA Sports tries to make the game as though you are a real coach...but too real. Endless meetings that could be done through text messages instead of having to actually move from place to place, office hours, meetings with owners...ACK!!
  
  Train players, draft players, trade players, create a playbook, coach games. That's all there should be in this stupid game. Unfortunately, there's too much junk in it. I really had high hopes for this game, but, apparently, EA Sports didn't even bother to look at some of the sports strategy sims that are out there to see what works. Instead, they included everything that didn't.
  
  On a side note...how do these idiots keep their jobs? If the reviewers here on Amazon can see the flaws in the game, can't EA Sports see them?...more info
• Allright
  The game itself is allright. I agree with everyone, that it has way too much detail from the coaching aspects. In the coaching meetings, the coaches always seem to ask the same questions. For example, I drafted a rookie punter in the final round of the draft and after four games he is avg. 50+ yds per punt, but every week my special teams coach, wants to bench him and let my kicker do both duties. WHY??? The offensive coordinator is an idiot during gameplay. For example, I was trailing 17-13 with a minute to go with no timeouts and I had the ball. THE OC wants me to run the ball. Hello, I not a football genius, but maybe I need to pass the ball. The defensive coordinator, not too much brighter, constantly wants to call dime defensives on first down. I did, however, enjoyed the draft. I thought it was well thought out. Some of the picks were a little off, Reggie Bush went 9th. Some cornerback from East Tennessee State was drafted at 7. Mel Kiper commentary is pretty good. If you make a dumb pick, he will let you know. One person reviewed that the draft was in real time and you had to wait 30 minutes between picks. Not true, just press the square button and it sims to your next pick. Overall, this game has a lot of problems, but it is the first time out. I am sure EA sports will take all the feedback and make this a most own game in the future. Right now, I would hold off buying it until a couple of years from now, when it's a bargain bin game. Trust me, you should be able to go to any game store in the next few months and find it in the used games, because it just has too many flaws right now....more info
• This game is terrible. It seems like a lot of fun, UNTIL ...
  This game has a lot going for it inside the box. Even after you install it and start the game, the premonition of fun filled simulation gaming goes down the tube when you realize how buggy this game is. DO NOT purchase this game. Madden football games are GREAT! This game is not. Even if it is 180 from Madden style gaming and puts you in the coaches seat - it STILL had bugs.
  
  This game will never be reproduced, upgraded or continued by EA Sports. What a complete failure.
  
  So much potential ruined by common game play bugs.
  
  My biggest complaint is not the fact it may take hours on hours to play one game - that can be fun if you enjoy simulation type games. The prob is when you actually take the field as a coach. Your hands get tied behind your back and you have limited coaching ability on the field!? Uh...isn't this "NFL Head Coach", not "NFL GM"?
  
  And besides the fact there are bugs that limit reality in the game - there are programming bugs which crash the game half the time. Your computer will not crash and freeze up - but you will get stuck in a dead end in the game and find it useless to continue. The 0-0 bug (which is NOT simply fixed by reducing your roster size as EA claims), the Wrong Team bug (where you suddenly are the coach of another team when game day arrives). Then there is the statistics problem. It's not really a bug, but when does someone like Brett Farve throw 10 interceptions in 4 games and have a 50.0 passer rating? c'mon? Or Mark Brunnell - I know he's a bit old...but 20 interceptions in 8 games with 20.9 passer rating!? get real.
  
  Safe your life from misery. Don't buy this game. As someone noted in an earlier review - EA seemed to rush their release and not play test this game when it came out a year or so ago.
  
  Sad....more info
• Very Disappointed
  I was really looking forward to this game. I have several text football simulations that I enjoy playing. I enjoy running the GM functions and picking the plays to see what happens. I like making the trades and building my teams. This game isn't that. It is more an exercise in tedium. The interface is clunky and hard to get it to do what you want. It is buggy when you work hard to ready players each week to have it bug out and return to zero readiness. If you could combine the view of plays like in Madden with some of the good text simulations, you could have a great game. This is just a mess....more info
• An gaming atrocity
  I have played many football GM simulators in the past, and was really looking foward to this game. I have to say that this is the first computer program that has ever outraged me due to it being an overall terribly put together piece of software.
  
  I gave this program a big chance, but after reaching game three of the regular season, I just got so fed up, I uninstalled it and threw away the CDs.
  
  Let's have some examples of how bad this game is, shall we?
  
  1) BUG: When I tried to "motivate" my players in practice, the menus wouldn't come back, and I'd have to close the program and restart from whenver the autosave last saved. EA said it was the video card on my machine, so I tried it on another machine. Same problem. Seems to me a menu not reappearing has nothing to do with my graphics card. I had the patch already installed.
  
  2) BUG: In the middle of an interview I just got suddenly exited out of the practice. The fellow I interviewed was acting like I hired him, but I couldn't hire him. Very odd.
  
  3) BUG: Players on routes would always run out of bounds in the endzone, even for supposed goal line plays.'
  
  4) GM GAMEPLAY: Practices improve certain aspects of your players. But what to do to make them better? Who knows. For "attribute" practices I just randomly ran plays and eventually everybody got better.
  
  5) GM GAMEPLAY: If I simmed past the practices, then it was like the practices didn't occur, and all the coaches were all pissy about the players being unprepared. So what was going on during all that simming?
  
  6) GM GAMEPLAY: The whole calender thing is unbareably tedious, and unrealistic. I can't explain it, but its real bad. Heck, just by reading the comments by other people, lots couldn't figure out how to change your schedule to do something not preplanned. I could keep going on about this but the coaching stuff deserves most of the attention.
  
  7) PLAY DESIGN: Boy I wish I could've tested my plays I designed, but what really bugged me was if you pressed left or right on the designer, you wouldn't get the player to your left or right, it would be somebody else! Made no sense, and discouraged me from creating plays.
  
  8) COACHING GAMEPLAY: All seven games I played I won by LARGE margins. Only got scored on in two. The AI sucks. Nobody should be that good at a game once they begin. Plus I was on a crappy team, and I just stopped practicing after a while.
  
  9) COACHING GAMEPLAY: Dude, prepare for some interceptions. I pretty much threw 30% of the time, mostly short stuff. But the computer kept throwing, and my DBs had tons of interceptions each game. Not realistic.
  
  10) COACHING GAMEPLAY: Speaking about off stats, I pretty much blitzed every play. I would routinely get 7 sacks a game, and a lot more tackles for a loss. Meanwhile I am still getting a ton of interceptions.
  
  11) COACHING GAMPEPLAY: You call this a Sim! If I change my view to blimp view all the sudden both quaterbacks would throw nothing but incompletes. So basically on defense I could switch to blimp view, and on offense the classic view. In the entire time on blimp view there was only one complete pass and one an interception. At least the number of interceptions was cut down.
  
  12) COACHING GAMEPLAY: Who's that player: You want somebody to motion or something, but none of the camera angles can show you which receiver is lined up on the sides. Just have to guess.
  
  I really could go on forever. There are a lot more bugs, bad interfaces, and poor simulations.
  
  DO NOT BUY THIS GAME...more info
• We'll have to wait till next year...
  I love playing Madden, and when I saw this game I was extremely excited. When I first started playing I really enjoyed it, ignoring some minor flaws. But the in-game play is terrible. I'm no Don Shula, but I could've coached my team to consecutive undefeated seasons and outscored my opponents by thousands of points if I played this game any longer. The first game I played, I won 45-0. And that was no fluke, I won my first regular season game 58-7, and the three other games I played were all blowouts as well. I had Lamont Jordan getting 70+ yard touchdown runs in almost every game. My opponent, Drew Brees, threw 7 interceptions in a game. I was waiting for some tough competition to show up, but I eventually lost my patience. You cannot change difficulty level (which is stuck on ridiculously easy) or quarter length (5 minutes)
  
  Some reviews here say things that are false, it is unnecessary to wait forever during the draft, or go through every single meeting (although they're really no big deal they take about a minute). The only things I would really simulate through are the games. Infact, you can simulate your entire season, or your whole career for that matter. Personally, I liked the behind the scenes coaching in your office or on the practice field.
  
  Make sure you are aware though that this game will require an advanced computer (it seems other people here haven't realized it), a simple office computer will only play the game at very poor quality. And don't complain about the graphics, EA uses a different graphics engine for the computer than the consoles (if you play Sims 2 or Madden 06 on the computer you will realize this).
  
  If you buy this game, you will notice numerous minor yet noticeable flaws in it (people falling down in practice late, incorrect calls on the play-by-play ticker), some worse flaws (if you hit backspace during while calling a play during practice it is necessary to exit the game using Ctrl+Alt+Del), and absolutely pathetic AI for your opponent. If EA makes an NFL Head Coach 2 and fixes it up and makes in-game coaching much better, it will be a fantastic game. But until the second edition, we're stuck with a sub-par game.
  ...more info
• Needs work
  I'm not a big fan of the Madden games so I bought this one because it was different. However, after playing this game for two days I am dissapointed and wishing they had kept a few of the Madden style interfaces.
  
  The first off-season is a bit tedious, with all the tutorials and whatnot, but after you get through those and start to learn the interface things really pick up.
  
  I like most of the options that you have and the things you can do,(manage salary cap, change playbook, hire free agents, ect) what I didn't like is how much you are ruled by your schedule and how little input you actually have over it.
  
  I was also dissapointed by the in game play calling, audibling and roster management. They all seem to be missing features that madden and other sports games have had for years, such as being able to mass substitute and flip plays with an audible.
  
  However, the interface is the real key. It's clunky, clumsy and just doesn't give you enough information to make informed choices. The worst example was not being able to find out how many draft picks I had during the draft! The only way to find out was to try and trade with another team or look at the info box to see if I had one of the next five picks.
  
  I like this game enough to keep playing for a little while, but I hope they come out with some patches to beef up the interface....more info
• Task based and boring
  I am a huge fan of Madden NFL series. This game is not very much like anything I've seen. I agree with other reviewers that this is just not as fun as Madden NFL. Running practice is boring, the whole task based interface is dumb, esp. since you can't switch office hours tasks or some other tasks. It seems if you sim the tasks, your players often get hurt even on non contact drills, and game day is not very interesting.
  The interface for viewing your players and their stats sucks. Even changing the deepth chart is work.
  I like putting together playbooks and calling plays, but my D coach quit after the first regular season game.. I had to hire him back for some reason. I started letting him call all D plays and he seems happier. Well that takes half the game calling away from me.
  Your relationship with the coaches are based on a trust level thing, and through most meetings, all options bring trust down. (only once in a while will a conversation option raise the trust level).
  I am going to start simming all days up to the game day, and maybe sim some games just see how the game performs.
  I don't have any software problems or slow graphics or jerky video or sound.
  I recommend you not buy this version and keep using Madden NFL for your coaching fix....more info
• You get out of it, What you put in to it.
  I'm not sure what most of the bad reviews are based on. To me this game is exactly what I expected. Is the game filled with too much detail? Sure, that is why most NFL head coaches have disfunctional family lives -- if they have one at all.
  
  Some of the game interfaces could be better but I think that the fact that the game forces you to follow a daily schedule keeps your tasks on track. EXAMPLE - at first it was frustrating to only negotiate a hand full of contracts at a time before being pulled away to talk with the owner -- but that is the way it goes for a head coach.
  
  I also think many of those who dislike the game either wanted a head coach only game (pick assistant coaches, set depth charts, run practices & play games) or they wanted a GM game (sign free agents, scout for the draft, the draft itself & balance the salary cap). It seems many people do not like doing both head coach & GM tasks.
  
  Overall this game will need improvements in future years but I think this is an outstanding first effort for EA....more info
• Being A Head Coach Is This Boring?????
  This game is just plain boring!
  I had no idea being a head NFL coach would be this boring.
  If you like sitting in meetings, answering the phone and reading emails....this game is for you.
  All of the tasks that are required of you take forever to do...even reading emails takes several steps.
  When you finally get to coach a game....IT IS BORING!!!!!!
  Complete waste of time and money.
  Save time and money to just play the regular EA College Football games or Madden Games....more info
• Great idea but falls way too short...
  I am a huge fan of the NCAA game, and I like the Madden game mostly for the owner/coaching modes in Dynasty, so I thought this game would be great. Wrong...
  
  The main problem I have with this game that has not been mentioned in the other reviews is the horrible, horrible interface. Half of the things needed to be done in the game are impossible to find. Like I'm trying to sign free agents, I wanna see how much more space on my roster there was (ya know, I already have X players out of 55)...after ten minutes of looking...nothing. Could not for the life of me find it in Roster Breakdown. Had to manually count the roster.
  
  Later on, while trying to organize my depth chart, I was trying to change position designations for players (mainly so I stopped getting the stupid warning that I had too few ILBs...was gonna switch an OLB). Hmmmm...simple enough...ended up turning off the game because the game kept telling me I was already in the middle of some task and had to wait for Office Hours. I would go into Office Hours, and it would give me some other reason as to why I couldn't change Player Info (it was the wrong period...this is the time to Sign Players, or something).
  
  Horribly frustrating game, and the actual gameplay, when you're coaching is cr*p. No real play-by-play announcer, you're zoomed way out from the action, I don't like the camera angle, you can't set different quarter lengths, and most annoyingly, everything is in real time. If you wanna talk to the players and motivate them/strategize you do it according to game clock time (coordinators call plays in your absence). So you'd think there was some easy on-screen menu to access such options. No...you have to dig through several menus, wasting precious gametime. And forget trying to call a timeout. Takes forever, digging through all the menus.
  
  A well-intentioned game, an interesting concept, but the interface and flow are atrocious. PASS ON THIS ONE!...more info