**NFL Head Coach 09 Feature Breakdowns**

[Josh_Looman]

Just wanted to clear up some confusion on the emotional reaction feature and talk a little bit about how it works.

I wanted to start posting these Feature Breakdown posts to better explain our intent and give you an idea of the depth of each of these features. Look for more in the future.

On to Emotional Reaction:

You CAN select Emotional or Calm and when you get the approval change item, it's called emotional reaction.

That name just communicates the name of the feature, NOT your choice.

Your choice varies based on your player's personality types, so you'll need to get a good feel for how players generally like you to react when something happens to them. It is not random. Personality traits like 'Sensitive' or 'Easy Going' (I'm in a hotel room and don't have the game this morning...I might be slightly off on those trait names) impact how the player's approval changes with the reaction.

This is part of the whole personality type metagame in Head Coach. One of your goals should be to put together a team of your 'type' of player. Great examples from real life are Dungy with the Colts and Gruden with the Bucs. The Colts are made up of a lot of players who have the same personality type as Dungy. They take everything that happens to them in stride. Big touchdown? Calmly celebrate it. Big turnover? Shake it off and come back next time. Gruden seems to still be putting together a team of his guys and that shows up a lot if you follow the team closely. He's offended a lot of players on that team and I feel like that's because he has a lot of players that don't like that style. Look at the Chris Simms situation. So that's a big part of managing personalites (which Game Informer said we needed to do since we had nothing dealing with that ) and a big part of being a head coach.

I started a career with the Titans and in my first game, I had to react to a Vince Young fumble and a LenDale White touchdown run. I quickly found out that both guys prefer you to react calmly to what happens to them. The next time I had to react, I chose calmly and promptly gained back some approval with both guys. It goes without saying that keeping your players happy will help you continue to keep your job.

Knowing your players inside and out is the most important job a coach has. It's equally important in Head Coach.

[Josh_Looman]

Ok, Let me see if I can provide some clarity on the contract questions. We decided to design contract talks a little bit differently in Head Coach '09, adding incentives and being able to re-negotiate deals before the season is over. Some things to remember:

• Players will decide when they want to re-do their deals. This includes players who think they are underpaid who want a new deal 2-3 years before their new deal is done. Players in the final year of their deals will start coming up sometime in September to start re-doing deals.

• The Player Status screen will give you a lot of insight into what a player is thinking.

• Personalities play a huge part in negotiating contracts. Guys who are tough to deal with can walk away from negotiations. IMPORTANT: Every time a player walks away from negotiations, there is a chance (based on personality type) that he will refuse to resign and he won't be back with the team. At that point, you can trade him or use the franchise tag on him at the end of the season. That's all you can do.

• This may be common knowledge, but important. When negotiating, try to get a player to accept the contract with the smallest signing bonus and incentives without letting him walk. That will help keep you out of cap trouble if you have to cut the player.

• Incentives are applied to next year's cap if they are met. We simplified incentives vs. how they work in real life.

One screen you need to check a lot is the player status screen. I'll be doing a feature breakdown soon on the player status screen since it drives a lot of what happens in the game.

Hope this helped!

[Josh_Looman]

I wanted to make sure you guys were playing attention to player status and that screen. It gives you an idea of what your players are thinking and what their approval is. Some things to keep in mind:

• Players who are 'thinking about the future' are contemplating retirement. That means that sometime in the future, they'll probably retire. Players can retire at any time in our game. That means that an old veteran can walk away in training camp or after the Draft. This is part of what a real life coach has to deal with.

• Some players with rare personality traits can walk away in the prime of their careers. This is rare but it is inspired the Robert Smith/Barry Sanders/Tiki Barber storylines from the NFL. The player will leave to become a doctor, sports anchor, etc.

• Personalties play a huge part in this game. They can cause a player to be upset about the talent around him (Ray Lewis), be upset about the team drafting a player at his position in the 1st round of the Draft (Donovan McNabb), be upset about playing time, be upset about being franchise tagged (hundreds of players) or be upset about losing (Chad Johnson). Schefter will tell you about these guys, you'll see them in the ticker and you may have to deal with them if they are on your team.

• If a player is really unhappy about anything of these things, he can skip training camp, skip practices, demand a trade, demand to be released or even go public about the spat and complain about his head coach in a national interview.

• A few traits make a player 'a team player'. That means no matter what happens to him, he'll never cause trouble. The team player traits can also make a player want to help the team. You'll see players want to re-do their deal to save the team some cap room.

• Some traits will cause players to always be optimists. That means that no matter what the situation is, you'll always see that their status is 'Very happy'.

Hope this clears up any confusion about player status.

[Josh_Looman]

Ok, Let me see if I can provide some clarity on staff hiring. We designed hiring coaches a little bit differently in Head Coach '09, so here are some things to remember:

Personalities play a big part in the hiring/firing process. Even if you decide to keep a staff member around, they may leave or retire based on personality traits and/or age. Some ambitious staff members will leave no matter how good things are with the team. Just as some loyal staff members (Monte Kiffin) will stay around until they are 100.

The timing of staff hiring mimics what happens in real life, so it literally takes up the entire playoff period. When each team's season is over (Week 17 for non playoff teams and each playoff week thereafter), staff members are either fired, kept around or leave. Again, owner's personalities play a big part on what happens to the staff members. Some owners are really tough and they'll fire you if your approval is around 15 or 20. Some owners will let you stay around for a few years even if your approval is consistently around 5 or 10.

At this point, the fired and unemployed (including new free agent college coaches) are ordered by best available and they start appearing in the clipboard. Each team with a hole to fill will start deciding who they want to go after and what they are willing to give up to get them. Some teams will gamble and decide to wait until the next round of playoff games is over to see what staff members leave those playoff teams. Their is risk/reward with waiting too long, though. All of the other teams may have signed all of the good free agent staff members and if no staff members leave those playoff teams, you are stuck with a scrub.

IMPORTANT: If you are the last team with a hole to fill and you dismiss all free agents the week after the Super Bowl, you will automatically hire the last guy you dismissed.

Another thing to note...don't think of staff members on the player rating scale of what amounts to 50-100. Staff members in Head Coach are usually rated pretty low so that you can upgrade their skills (if they have enough potential). Elite staff members are rated in the 80s or 90s, but you may not see a ton of those guys in free agency every year. If you do, you'll probably need to give up a lot to get them.

When you bid on a staff member, the experience will be different depending on their overall rating. Elite staff members will include demands that make sense. Some demands that will be only available when bidding on them are: Cut a Player they don't like, Replace a portion of the playbook, fire all staff members, etc. Most of the time you won't you see those options with average coaches.

There have some been some questions about swapping playbooks, so here's some clarification on that. When you hire an offensive or defensive coordinator, you'll have a clipboard item appear after bidding for them has concluded. In that clipboard item, you'll be allowed to take any play from their playbook and add it to yours. This is the only way you can take individual plays from them and supplement your playbook. So if you want the Run and Shoot or the Wishbone guy's plays, you'll need to do it here.

Keep enjoying the hiring of staff members and hopefully this cleared up any confusion.

[TJdaSportsGuy]

In an effort to clean things up a bit in this forum, I'm moving all of the feature breakdown posts to this one thread.

[delusional]

Quote:

There have some been some questions about swapping playbooks, so here's some clarification on that. When you hire an offensive or defensive coordinator, you'll have a clipboard item appear after bidding for them has concluded. In that clipboard item, you'll be allowed to take any play from their playbook and add it to yours. This is the only way you can take individual plays from them and supplement your playbook. So if you want the Run and Shoot or the Wishbone guy's plays, you'll need to do it here.

I have yet to see this option happen.

[steamboat]

Quote: Originally Posted by delusional

I have yet to see this option happen.

I have not either.

[steelraccoon]

I too have not seen the option pop up to add plays or swap playbooks. I think this is something the Devs need to look into cause the general response from the community is that the feature does not work.