PlayStation 3

NFL Head Coach 09

NFL Head Coach features many innovations that are uncommon in sports games and offers an engaging coaching/GM experience. The depth and authenticity with regard to team management are impressive, and there are moments during a game when you actually feel like a head coach. Provided that you are a hardcore football fan and can look past its flaws, Head Coach is an enjoyable game with rich replay possibilities.

NFL Head Coach 09 is sort of like a Tamagotchi that has been built specifically for adult males who are foaming at the mouth for more football than any one Sunday could bring. It delves very deep into the actions of a head coach and, while most of it does feel like plodding through an endless stream of menus, there’s a good chunk of Monday morning quarterbacks who are sure to enjoy it.

This game is like your favorite team going from a 5-11 one year to a 6-10 record the next. Regardless of whatever improvements have occurred, you aren't going anywhere with that kind of record.

Despite being packed with scads of options and details normally suited for spreadsheets and salary cap gurus, it’s hard to justify Head Coach’s full-price treatment. Between the NFL Network announcer that has the same canned sound bite for common transactions and the lousy framerate of the in-game action, there’s a decidedly second-class-citizen feel from the get-go. Head Coach succeeds as a solid statistical simulator for hardcore football junkies; unfortunately, that translates into a pretty dull experience.

While the thought of a football RPG may bore some who enjoy the hands-on experience of Madden and other similar titles, there are some positives to NFL Head Coach 09. Football heads may enjoy the fact that the game does a good job of applying what your team learned from the drills they worked on throughout the week to the game you play the following Sunday, and that EA does a good job of adding a level of excitement to a very slow-paced game. Where it fails is in its ability to appeal to a wide audience. The only people who may actually be interested in purchasing NFL Head Coach 09 are those who crave so much football that their latest installment of Madden simply won't do.

If you love the Madden franchise mode and want more depth, then here you have it. But is it worthy of a standalone release? Anyone who was interested in playing NFL Head Coach is likely a die-hard football fan, so it's hard to conceive of a target audience for this game who wouldn't have already picked up this year's version of Madden. NFL Head Coach is a decent value when considered as part of the 20th anniversary Madden NFL 09 package, but doesn't quite do enough to merit a purchase for the standalone version.

Nothing says a simulator can't be fun. I love the idea of plotting out my draft board, targeting free agents, cutting dead weight, and juggling the salary cap. But Head Coach 09 just left me frustrated and angry.