NFL Head Coach Interview (PC, PS2, Xbox)

[Steve_OS]

We have just posted our interview with Jonathan Durr, Assistant Producer, of NFL Head Coach.

Operation Sports: "How realistic are the playbooks for each team? Can we develop our own plays, formations and schemes?"

Jonathan Durr: "The playbooks are very realistic for each team (each coach actually) and based on real NFL game film from the NFL. Yes you can develop your own plays, formations, play groups and game plans."

Operation Sports: "How will the game improve on the GM aspects of an NFL franchise, such as player contracts, salary cap management, player agent interactions, etc?"

Jonathan Durr: "When dealing with contracts, everything goes through conversations with the player’s agent. When agents dislike a deal they’ll tell you. When they think that the deal is close, they might come down on their asking price. There’s a lot more negotiating now."

[Nza]

Ooo, good to see some of my Q's got in there

Interesting answers, the depth with the playbooks and GM/Owner personalities sound nice, although GM "personalities" are actually in Madden already, at least on the PC - i.e., each coach has a set of sliders for which types of players they like, such as scramblers, speed WR's etc, so this probably isn't new. Some of the other stuff there are also kinda in Madden already. For instance, the way he described the gameplanning could easy just be Madden 06's weekly gameplanning feature with a new name.

Good interview, although i'll still refrain from getting too excited because some of the answers sound an awful lot like how the Madden crew answer Q's, and i've since learnt creating expectations based on relatively vague answers is a great way to be disappointed with Madden every year. For instance, I was kinda hoping the answer to my salary/contract question would go in depth with how they adopted new contract breakdown types and a more realistic salary cap system than the current Madden one, but he failed to go further than the agents part of the question, so rather than hope he was strapped for time and those areas were improved, i'll presume he didn't cover them because they weren't improved.

[georgiafan]

Operation Sports: How detailed will college scouting reports be?

Jonathan Durr: By default you don’t see players’ ability ratings. When you scout NFL players or players coming into the NFL from college you are narrowing down their attribute ranges so you know how well they perform. After the Combine you are also presented with a report based on the college players you elected to scout. This report details feedback on the player’s strengths and weaknesses


good interview, you saw vernon davis rating in that pic though.

[bkrich83]

Quote: Originally Posted by georgiafan

good interview, you saw vernon davis rating in that pic though.

Your point?

[eaglesfan27]

Vernon was probably already scouted some.

[georgiafan]

He said that you don't see players ability ratings but then in the pic you saw Davis ratings. Does that make sense?

[bkrich83]

Quote: Originally Posted by georgiafan

He said that you don't see players ability ratings but then in the pic you saw Davis ratings. Does that make sense?

He said you narrow the range down. That's a pre-release pic, little early to panic. We don't even know what context that pic is in.

[elprez98]

I'm not as excited following that interview. Mainly because of the possibility of it not being BC for the 360.