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Head coach, Atlanta Gryphons. Age 53, 4 seasons coaching.
Every team has a head coach and offensive, defensive and special teams coordinators. Each coordinator has a style, and his style decides the range of the team's weekly game plan: how much it runs or passes, its personnel, tempo and play calls on offense, its front, blitzes, coverage and safety looks on defense, and its fourth down, onside, squib and punt return choices on special teams. The coaches set the style; nobody can call a plan outside it.
Offensive styles: Power run (downhill gap runs out of heavy sets, and play action off them); West Coast (a short, timed passing game that stretches the field sideways, and outside zone); Air Raid (spread the field and throw: Mesh, Four Verts and Smash, with draws to keep the rush honest); Spread option (zone reads and counters from the gun, with screens and play action off the run); Balanced (no strong lean: the whole playbook, called by the matchup). Each style calls its favorite plays more often, from 0.7 to 1.5 times its usual share. Defensive coordinators play a 3-4 or a 4-3 front, are blitz-heavy (blitz lean from -0.1 to 0.5) or coverage first (-0.5 to 0.1), and call man or zone and one or two deep safeties, never the other. Special teams styles: aggressive (goes for it more on fourth down near midfield, tries onside kicks earlier, squibs less and returns more punts); balanced (the usual fourth down, onside, squib and return choices); conservative (punts more on fourth down, waits longer for an onside kick, squibs more and fair catches more punts).
No style is better than the others: each one wins about as often as the rest when the rosters are equal. What changes is how the team plays and which matchups suit it.
Every coach also has hidden ratings for play calling, adjustments, development and discipline. Better play callers commit harder to what the matchup calls for, better adjusters react to smaller edges, and better disciplinarians draw fewer flags. They help a little; the players on the field matter far more. Development adds at most 3.2 percent to every training session for the best staff and takes as much for the worst, the same on a plan day and a check-in, so how often you train always matters far more than who coaches you.
A new head coach starts everyone on his team again at 50 on the trust meter, with the reason shown on your player page.
Every offseason the AI teams follow written rules: a head coach with at least two seasons in the job (for the coaches a league starts with, counted from its first season, so no head coach is fired before the second offseason) is fired after 5 wins or fewer, or when his last two seasons together are under .400; a coordinator with at least two seasons is fired when his unit ranks 14th or worse. Coordinators with three or more seasons whose unit ranks in the top 6 can be hired away as head coaches. Coaches retire at 70, and from 64 on some choose to. Every move is in the league news.
Coaches are paid salaries on contracts, shown on the staff page in in-game dollars. They are never real money and cannot be bought or cashed out. The team's books pay them every season, and the buyout of a fired coach counts in the season he was fired (see the owner finances guide).
Offensive-minded (Air Raid). Came up on offense; hires offensive coordinators who run the Air Raid offense.
$1.4M a season through season 2.
Challenges a close call when it matters.
No challenges as a head coach in this league yet.
Officials sometimes get a close call wrong: a catch or no catch, a fumble or down by contact, the spot at the first down marker or the goal line, an interception. The game plays out what really happened, and the officials' ruling on the field is what counts unless a review changes it.
A head coach can challenge a ruling that hurt his team. He gets 2 challenges a game and a third if he wins both, he needs a timeout left to throw the flag, and a challenge he loses costs him that timeout. Coaches cannot challenge after the two-minute warning of either half or in overtime; then the replay official decides what to look at. Every close touchdown and turnover is reviewed by the replay official, never by a challenge.
On the field you see a red banner (Coach challenge and the team, or Booth review), then the referee's ruling: The ruling is overturned, or The ruling on the field stands. The play text, the play-by-play and the call then say what the final ruling is and what it leaves, such as "the ball was short of the line to gain, so it is 3rd and 1". The replay that follows shows the play again under review. The play-by-play, the stats and the box score always count the play as finally ruled, and a review never shows before the play it belongs to.
A replay does not settle every call: some are not clear enough, and the ruling on the field stands. And not every wrong call is challenged, so now and then one stands that the replay would have changed.
Each head coach has his own habit: an aggressive coach throws the flag on more close calls, a conservative one saves his challenges and timeouts. You can read a head coach's habit and his record on challenges on his coach page. Players and managers do not challenge in this version; the coach decides.
No finished season in this league yet.