If you want to buy this game - Dont!
At first glance, NFL Head Coach 09 seems like a vast improvement over its predecessor, NFL Head Coach. The new clipboard system, a revolving menu system which gives you all pertinent information while placing important events front and center for your attention, seems light years ahead of the previous jumbled mess; however, this is where the praise ends. Once you spend one or two hours in the game, you'll quickly grow tired of its repetitive and glitchy gameplay.
In career mode, players take over the helm of the team of their choice. You can keep the current coach or opt to create a coach using the bare bones create-a-coach option (seriously?! I can't customize anything but his face?!). Next you select your coaching style and skills, all of which make a barely noticeable impact. After you've "customized" your coach, you can choose to start after the Superbowl or at the beginning of preseason. Assuming you have the energy to press the A button repeatedly and have and hour to spend, you'll be disappointed to see that the off-season leading into the draft is a complete waste.
Assuming you've gone this far without chopping the game in pieces and feeding it to your dog, you're in for yet another disappointment as you will notice that your personnel are, for a lack of a better word, inept. Your peers will place goals that make no sense (I do not need ANOTHER HB with 85 average!) and will lose respect for you should you ignore their wishes. The scouting crews draft choices and scouting results are confusing and mostly unimportant. The time tables on important decisions often move to fast (even on the lowest setting) and you will often find yourself missing important events such as trade requests and free agent bidding. Of course if you save and turn off the game mid-week, you might want to consider skipping these events anyway, since this activates the free agent glitch in which mediocre athletes request multi-million dollar deals with signing bonuses and incentives.
Still haven't set this disk a blaze and roasted marshmallows over it? Well now you're ready to go into preseason and play your first game! Well, don't get too excited because you're in for a disappointment. First off I hope you did not save at the beginning of the week, because then you activated glitch #2, which places a player WHO WAS NEVER INJURED on the injured list. But back to the game - the graphics look like they came from Madden 2000 and the audio is sooo terrible they should use it as an interrogation technique. I sure hope you did not put too much time into trying to prepare for each game because it does not really matter. Actually, neither does play-calling. Just calling the same play on both offense and defense I managed to shut out the computer 37-0. But even if you are the strategist who manages to read the defenses each play, it won't matter since the AI is clumsier than Warren Sapp on the dance floor. QBs will ignore and open receiver streaking down the sideline and instead dump off to the halfback three feet away; players will not attempt to get out of bounds or stay in bounds to control the clock; HBs opt to scramble around the field losing yardage rather than put their head down and get the yardage (especially frustrating in 3rd and short situations). Combine these stupidities with the insane amount of turnovers, players CONSTANTLY blowing assignments, and ridiculous injuries (last time I checked, Drew Brees was not on special teams!) and you'll be pulling your hair out in no time.
Have you strapped the game to a nuclear warhead and dropped it over the middle east? No? Well it gets better - EA brought back, albeit in a simplified form, the emotion meter, which allows you to respond calmly or emotionally to game breaking moments. Depending on your coaching style (remember how I said this was not that important? Here is one point that it is) players will react positively or negatively to how you respond. The problem is that even you get all the emotion meters wrong, your team will never lose respect for you, so you can get all of these wrong have no negative impact.
The only new feature EA brings to the table are Game Defining moments, where the coach is presented with a choice between the "safe" rout and the "ballsy" move. On fourth and short, do you go for it or punt the ball? When having the defense pinned inside their 10 yard line, do you blitz or play it safe and cover the field? This mode showed promise in previews of the game, but much like the rest of the game, fails in execution. Depending on your coaching style (dang I was wrong! It comes into play twice!) you will be shown the current respect the media, coaches, players, owner, and fans have for you, and how much it will change depending on which option you take. Problem is, the "safe" choice is often the best and the "ballsy" is near impossible; however, the group normally loses respect unless you choose the ballsy. Go safe - lose respect. Go ballsy and fail - respect. I even encountered several occasions where I went ballsy, completed, and STILL lost respect. This was the only redeeming feature in the game and it failed worse than Jason David trying to cover a wideout.
This game is more of a disaster than Jessica Simpson in Texas Stadium, which is a shame considering the amount of time they supposedly spent making it. I am a huge fan of this genre and hate to bash it, but this game was clearly overlooked by the "madden machine." It is so poorly made I would not even recommend them making it a mode in madden, let alone being bundled with it. For those gamers looking to save a penny by picking it up with madden 09 in the collector's edition, you'll be wasting $30 on a featureless, completely frustrating "game." Stay away from Head Coach 09.