We Need An NFL Head Coach Game

The NFL is growing in popularity around the world. This global expansion keeps the Madden franchise moving, even as the game itself grows stale. However, there is one experience missing from the NFL gaming sphere, a management sim.

Football fans who want to run a team but not actually play the games have the Football Manager series. An incredibly deep and engaging title that lets you set training schedules, conduct transfers, and fiddle with tactics before putting you on the sideline for the game and leaving you hoping the players take on board your instruction.

Formula 1 fans have a similar title in F1 Manager. For baseball there is Out of the Park Baseball and ice hockey fans have Franchise Hockey Manager. NFL fans have nothing, and that needs to change.

What Used To Be

This wasn’t always the case. Back in the late ’00s we had such a title. NFL Head Coach was released in June 2006 on PC, Xbox, and PS2. The game starts in the aftermath of Super Bowl XL. You’re a hotshot coordinator for the victorious Pittsburgh Steelers and getting interviews to be a head coach.

The interviews set your coaching attributes, and then you’re off to run a team. From scouting and drafting to calling plays and motivating your players on the sideline, you were a real NFL head coach.

That game was followed up with a sequel in 2008, but then that was it. The series disappeared.

Previous Madden games also let you be a coach on the sidelines, rather than having to play every snap. But that feature has also disappeared from the game, leaving players to either physically control their quarterback and defense or watch the super sim as a passive bystander.

The Risks Of Management Sims

Management sports games have always been a niche of a niche. It took Sports Interactive a long time to turn Football Manager into the juggernaut it is today. We’ve already seen that Formula 1’s expensive license has effectively ended the F1 Manager series early, while OOTP and FHM aren’t exactly flying off the shelves.

EA holds an exclusive NFL license to make simulation football games, but that license agreement is reaching its end. The current agreement was an extension signed back in 2020 and runs through the 2025 season, with an option to go to 2026 if revenue targets are hit.

Getting an NFL licensing deal for a management title today would therefore have to go through EA, or be part of a bidding war for the whole license. That would be costly for any third-party developer to do and immediately impact the likelihood of success for the title.

Could EA Do It Themselves?

EA has ignored the coaching simulation side of the sport for a long time now, and the copy/paste nature of their annual sports portfolio suggests there is little internal desire to innovate and create anything that isn’t directly tied to Ultimate Team microtransactions.

However, the positivity EA received from players for reviving the College Football game could tempt them into doing the same with a management title.

They already have a game engine that would allow a sideline simulation of the game, all they need to do is blend that with the playcalling and AI that is already present in Madden.

Of course, players would want some improvements to AI logic if they are only going to be calling the plays, but it seems that all the tools are there already.

There is also potential for a PvP Ultimate Team style mode. Open packs to stock your roster, complete challenges to unlock playbooks, and put limits on created plays to avoid overt metas and cheese gameplay.

There’s a ton of potential there, but having three football games from the same company risks splitting their player base. College Football’s Ultimate Team mode has undoubtedly doubled the spending of some players, but most will have picked one over the other. The same would happen here, as ultimately the majority of players will come from the same player base as Madden and College Football.

However, EA has a huge number of lapsed Madden players who could be tempted to part with their money for a Head Coach game. Those players who have left the series due to its lack of focus on franchise mode and single player experiences are still begging for an NFL game. They are the same kind of player that is checking out of the EA FC series and flocking to Football Manager.

EA appears to be leaving money on the table by not providing this audience with the game they are waiting for. We hope they realize this and let players put their virtual headset on once again.