It is a good time to be a sports fan. I mean just look at the sports calendar -- we are a month into the MLB season, the NBA and NHL Playoffs are in full swing, and there is also a litany of soccer, MMA, boxing, tennis, golf, F1, NASCAR and yes, even horse-racing events going on as well.

But even though all these events are going on, I have been ignoring my copies of NHL 09, NBA 2K9 and FIFA 09. The current sports season dictates that I should be digging into those titles right now, but I have not touched them at all lately, not one bit. Instead, I have spent the last few weeks playing NFL Head Coach 09, a game about a sport that ended play months ago. So why this game, what makes it so unique?

Well OK, I admit it. NFL free agency and the NFL draft had an impact on my urge to play HC 09. But I assumed that my interest in Head Coach would largely dissipate after the draft ended. However, much to my surprise that has not happened. Instead, my interest has only grown stronger, and I remain as addicted as ever to the game.

NFL Head Coach is addicting in a sort of start-playing-at-6-p.m-but-wow-look-out-the-window-it-is-suddenly-dawn-and-the-sun-is-coming-up sort of way. You are given control of a NFL franchise, and you build it up and make it a winner. And when you surround that idea with an abundance of authentic NFL elements, it only feeds into exactly what an NFL fiend would want from a game.

So in order to gain something productive from all of that time spent playing HC 09 -- at least I tell myself that so I do not feel bad for spending so many hours playing -- I decided to conduct an overview of the game.

In this article, I will highlight three positive aspects of HC 09, and three areas of the game that could be improved in future (here's to hoping) iterations of the series.

Head Coach 09 is one of the more underrated games on store shelves today.

The Draft

The draft is the most impressive part of NFL Head Coach 09, and I absolutely commend the work done in this area.

Now, sure, the draft has been implemented in NFL games before, but no game has simulated the draft and the lead-up to the event as accurately as Head Coach. Every step of the process, such as the prospect all-star game, the combine, the pro days and even individual workouts, are all represented in Head Coach.

But all of that great draft work would be worthless if the game did not provide you with an interesting crop of prospects to cultivate and develop. But this is another portion of the draft experience in Head Coach that exceeds anything seen in any sports game.

In other sports games, prospects are generated randomly, and although that is not a terrible way to produce players, it sometimes leads to prospects having nonsensical attributes that can negatively affect how your dynasty or franchise holds up in the long run.

The developers of NFL Head Coach sought to remedy this issue by crafting most of the draft prospects themselves. The result of this work is four distinct draft "paths" that are each filled with 15 years worth of individually created draft classes, which adds up to 60 drafts in all. The decision to mold each prospect allowed EA to treat each particular draft as its own entity. So each draft is filled with its own unique storylines, such as the Jack English draft which replicates the 1983 draft with Elway, Marino and Kelly.

Additionally, each prospect stands out because each one comes equipped with his own personality, proficiencies and deficiencies. Some of the prospects are even given the full star treatment -- video breakdowns of the prospects are provided by Adam Schefter and Todd McShay. These narrations highlight a prospect's progress during the college season or his performance in various events like the combine or pro day.

Perhaps the thing I like most about incoming prospects is how out of the box they can be. The creativity of the developers really shines here as you will see a wide variety of possible draftees. You will come across players with awesome names (Flash Gordon!), workout warriors, star prospects closely modeled after real-life athletes (Boar Jackson and Ozzie Jones anyone?) and other-worldly freaks of nature -- one of my favorites was Enoka Oshinowo, a 7-foot left tackle prospect out of Nebraska who could seriously be the best line prospect ever.

It even got to the point where I would continually play out each season just to see what unique prospects would come through my game next. I only wish the game actually listed each player’s draft position on his player card because I sometimes like to look back years later and see whether a prospect was a bust or not.

Ratings and Schemes That Matter

If the draft was one part of the game that the developers of Head Coach absolutely nailed, another place where they excelled was in the area of ratings/schemes and how they potentially affect coaches, players and teams.

For starters, each team comes equipped with an offensive and defensive playbook that closely matches their real-life schemes -- or at least it does for the 2008 season. So the Eagles will run a pass-heavy West Coast offense and will pressure the QB by blitzing often on defense. However, you can come in and change these strategies up completely if you manage the Birds.

And other teams are not immune to this type of change either. In fact, it is mostly dependent on the team’s head coach. Now, the fact that it does rely so heavily on the head coach can often lead to fun and unexpected consequences because, as coaches change, college coaches also enter the game. When college coaches enter the arena, this brings some unique offenses like the wishbone to the field, which can potentially lead to a major change in the overall play-style of the league.

Also, in other sports games there is normally one set of player ratings that ultimately determines a player’s overall worth. But Head Coach revolutionizes this entire system by allowing you to select your team’s philosophy for each position, which in turn dictates how each player is rated. For example, if your team scheme dictates that you need a mobile-type of quarterback, you can set your philosophy to favor that type of quarterback. What this means is that quarterbacks like Vince Young will be rated higher than if your team philosophy dictated an importance on looking for a pure passer or a field general.

In effect, this allows you to find players that fit your team’s particular schemes or to specifically tailor your schemes/playbook to fit your best players. And there are also some player ratings unique to Head Coach, such as learning ability, which affects how quickly a player can learn the playbook. So do you select the solid but smart individual or the dumber player with much higher potential? These are the sorts of internal battles you will sort through in HC.

However, the players are not the only ones with ratings. The coaches are also rated in a number of categories, such as their proficiency at play-calling or their ability to effectively develop players. This represents another addicting aspect of Head Coach as you will enter a never-ending quest to obtain skill points that go towards improving your coaches, trainers and general manager. It just feels like an extremely RPG-like approach that feeds into the satisfying nature of the game.

A Polished Quality

One final thing that still amazes me is just how polished Head Coach 09 is, especially post-patches. While it is still not entirely free from bugs or errors -- and I am sure there are some people who have problems with freezes during gameplay -- there really are not any problems big enough to totally kill my interest in the game.

And by polish, I mean the overall quality of the game. Just think about it, this is an ambitious title that packs together many differing elements, and yet it manages to effectively pull them all together. Sure, it is not perfect, but from the immersive presentation to the nice in-game graphics, it is possibly the most beautiful and highly advanced text-simulation/management type of game available today.

Another thing to consider is that since this is such a menu-heavy game, it is commendable that EA managed to deliver an intuitive, clear and easy to control user interface. And with so many complex elements within this game, it really could have been a nightmare to navigate. Instead, it is a breeze in most cases to jump around, sort out various statistics or ratings and find exactly what you need. Again, it is not perfect (and later I will explain where I would like to see improvement), but just look at a game like MLB Front Office Manager and its UI failings to see how a poor UI can disrupt the overall gameplay.

Managing your football empire is pretty slick, although there are some issues.

The Gameplay

I hate to sound harsh, but as great/addicting as the off-the-field gameplay is, the on-the-field gameplay leaves a lot to be desired at times.

The most visible problems can be found within the unbalanced nature of the passing and running games for both the user and computer teams. Quite simply, the running game is often too weak -- you will too often have defenders blowing into your backfield to take down the RB for negative yardage -- and the passing game can be massively overpowered -- with robo QBs easily rocketing accurate strikes down the field for medium to massive gains. Sure, the in-game sliders can fix some issues, but they do not completely fix these problems, and the in-game balance should not be so out of sorts in the first place.

Now, that is not to say that the on-the-field gameplay is not fun, because it can be, but the inability to consistently obtain realistic results saps some of the fun out of things. And in the end, in order to procure some realistic results and statistics, I resorted to simming out the majority of my games instead of playing them out.

However, I want to reiterate that these problems do not kill the overall gameplay because you can certainly work around them. But I am sure that improving these problems would certainly turn this good/solid game into an absolutely great game.

On-the-Field Presentation

As someone who plays quite a few text/management sims, NFL Head Coach 09 can really feel like a luxury at times since it contains some really nice graphics and animations that do an exemplary job of highlighting the 3-D action. However, and I suppose this is more of a personal gripe, I feel that the on-the-field presentation could be much better.

For instance, while there are a number of available viewing options, the only reasonably adequate option in my opinion is the "overhead" option because it allows you to get a complete look at how your defense or offense stacks up against the opposition. Unfortunately, since it is way above the action going on below, it is sometimes hard to decipher who is exactly who.

So to remedy this, I simply think there should be an option to clearly label the players on the field. And I do not think it is crazy to suggest this either because other football games have this option as well. I mean just look at strategy/tactics games in other genres. Those games not only allow you to have fully rotational camera angles, but they also make sure that all the needed information is provided, and all the units are clearly labeled.

I was also really surprised by the lackluster replay system in NFL Head Coach. You basically get a quick replay of the last play from some random camera angle. It just feels so archaic and inadequate. I mean the NHL games on the SNES and Genesis had rewind and fast-forward options for their replays, and this game lacks even those options. And as I have said, I mostly play from an overhead view so the replays are where I find that the game’s graphics really shine. So I just feel that it is a shame that the limited replay system does not allow you to have more options from which to appreciate the graphics and animations.

This also hinders your tactical abilities because you really have no way to examine each play after the fact to ascertain where your players were and why a play was a success or failure. It is really one of my biggest peeves with the game. I mean NFL players and coaches thrive or flounder on their "tape work" and this game does not even give you the raw basics of a decent replay system to perform this duty.

More Freedom

Head Coach does give you a nice amount of freedom. You can choose your team, roster, scheme and playbook. But as it stands, there are certainly some areas of the game that could be more open.

For instance, your options when negotiating contracts feels restrictive. In the game, you are given a list of combined salary and bonus options -- they can range from a total of six to as many as 36 depending on the player’s personality -- and you will have a set amount of time to bargain with the player on a particular number on that list. The actual years and terms are all produced by the game, and you have no input besides trying to bargain for the cheapest terms available.

Now, I will say that there is nothing inherently wrong with this system, and it is fine that this is the system the developers chose to go with. However, in the Front Office Football series, you are allowed to input your own terms, and you are allowed to re-sign, restructure or extend any contracts at any time. Going from the freedom of the system in FOF to the system in HC just feels like a huge downgrade.

Another area that also feels restrictive comes into play when you are hiring your staff. My problem is that there really is not a list of available coaches, trainers or general managers to peruse. Instead, the game just links you to random staff members to bid on. Please, just provide a list of who is available, what their attributes are and let me decide who to go after.


Head Coach is not a perfect game, but it is certainly good enough. And while I am sure some people may agree with a few of my points, there will also be some who disagree with the thoughts I have put forth. But one point that many can agree on is that NFL Head Coach 09 is just freakishly addicting, and it continues to hold up remarkably well almost a year after its release.

So let us just hope and pray that there are future iterations on the way. But in the meantime, my copies of NBA 2K9, FIFA 09 and NHL 09 will continue to remain untouched because I have still got an NFL franchise to run.