Best Football Strategy Games

[amr35]

Can anyone recommend some good football strategy sims (like ones focused on playcalling and on-field stragtegy)? I've heard of Action Football which sounds pretty good, but can only play one season. There's also Front Office Football and Head Coach 09, but how realistic are the actual games in those two titles? They seem to focus largely on GM stuff.

Thanks!

[Matt23134]

I have found in my short time researching strategy/text sim football games that they either focus on mainly GM duties, or mainly on the field playcalling duties. I've yet to find one that does both spectacularly.

I prefer the on field focus over the GM management stuff. For this, Action PC Football and Second and Ten Football are good. I only own SAT and have been really satisfied with it so far. You're right though, these are mainly for replaying single seasons. These don't offer and career/franchise mode options.

Front Office Football is really good if you like the GM stuff and you love looking at spreadsheets. It has the ability to call plays in game but I never tried this so I don't know how accurate it is. I found FOF to be more overwhelming than fun. Pro Football Simulator is very similar but the developer is continually improving on it. FOF seems to be pretty much dead.

I don't have much experience with Head Coach 09, but I know a lot of people here love it.

Bowl Bound College Football is a really fun game that focuses more on the management side of things. It allows you to take over any DIV I program and build it up through a career mode (or move on to bigger, better programs). It offers in-game play calling but I found the results of the plays to be kind of random. It didn't really seem like any play made a difference over the other. If you just want to sim games though, results seemed a lot more accurate. I LOVED this game for a long while, but as someone who mainly enjoys being the coach and not the GM, I got tired of the inconsistent play by play results.

I was too lazy to include links to any of these programs, but they can all be easily found by Google.

[Lieutenant Dan]

I'll throw a hat in for Head Coach 09. This game was for me, the most immersive and complete NFL experience I've had in a football game.

I played this game for eight months nearly daily, well into the night (offseason/draft nights were marathons LOL).

It's a pretty balanced game. You are a coach/GM, so you build your team and manage it, but it's got a great interface and you aren't micromanaging down to setting popcorn prices or anything. Just team building, gameplanning, and then execution on gamedays.

If you get it, get it for 360 and install it to the HDD. You get significantly better performance that way.

[notque]

Have you tried http://deeproute.com

Statistically it is very accurate. I am the developer, but it is quite good in my opinion.

[xblake16x]

Deeproute is very good. So is Head Coach 09

[pettermax]

I'll throw a hat in for Head Coach 09.

[JayBee74]

Action Football is very good. A lot of strategy (key RB's, double receivers, line shifts, etc.) but EASY to apply, very intuitive. For example if you call a 4-3 Formation, you would adjust it to BASIC, RUN, or PASS (BASIC being an in-between or read type defense) and then further to Man, Tight Man, Loose Man, Zone, Short Zone or Deep Zone. Then you can do your doubling (can't double out of zone defense) or keying (can't run key if you double any receiver or your in a pass modified defense). I could go on and on. Play your safety up to strengthen your run D.

Great, intuitive game.

[bkrich83]

For pure in game strategy I'd go actionpc or Second And Ten. I prefer SAT, myself. Plus you can play online vs. other opponents in these games as well.