When playing Madden NFL 06 or NCAA Football 06, it's easy to put yourself in the quarterback's shoes--evading oncoming rushers, finding the open man, and firing the ball on a rope into the open arms of the receiver. Similarly, when on defense, it's easy to identify with the middle linebacker, looking for a hole in the offensive line to bust through to lay a painful hit on the running back. With the upcoming NFL Head Coach, the development team at EA Sports is aiming to put an entirely new spin on the NFL experience--this time from the point of view of the coaches on the sidelines. We got a chance to take the game for a test run while visiting EA's Tiburon studio today and came away impressed by the chances the company is taking with this management sim.

"Management sim" isn't the term producers use when describing Head Coach. They prefer the phrase "3D sports strategy game," which, in many ways, does do a better job of explaining what Head Coach is. Unlike more traditional management sims, such as the Championship Manager soccer series (which is a massive hit overseas), Head Coach makes ample use of the Madden football engine in-game. As a result, you'll be watching a lot more football games happen on the field and parsing through massive tracts of hard data a lot less. Fewer stat checks and more gut checks, as the case may be. That doesn't mean the game is lacking depth--from our time with the game, there looks to be plenty to do in the game. It just means it's presented in a manner that will be far more familiar to Madden regulars.

Head Coach has two main single-player modes: the "coach now" mode, which takes you directly to an NFL game and lets you guide a team to victory on the field, and the far more in-depth career mode, which has you creating a coach from scratch and taking him through a 30-year career odyssey, which, if you play your cards right, will land you a place in the coaching hall of legends. To find your name mixed in with the Ditkas, Strams, and Landries of the NFL, however, you'll have a lot of work to do.

Your first goal will be choosing your alter ego's name and look; this is done through a coach creation mode that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever played with a create-a-character mode. You can edit your coach's look and name and even the licensed gear he'll be wearing on game day (and just like Mike Nolan, he won't be allowed to wear a suit and tie). You'll also be able to choose some general guidelines for your coaching style. Do you prefer an offensive style, or would you rather focus on the defensive side of the ball? The choices you make here will determine the kind of coach you become once you take over a team.

Once you've got your coaching avatar set up, it's time to dive right into your career. The next order of business will be to find a position with a team, and the first step is being interviewed by the team owner. Thankfully, you won't be forced to stick with the NFL bottom-feeders when it comes to choosing your team--if your favorite team is the Pittsburgh Steelers, you'll be able to land an interview with them straight away. The interview process is interesting--you answer a number of questions posed by the owner, which are designed to test your football awareness as well as your particular method for dealing with specific game-time situations. An example: "When caling a zone blitz, which player do you choose to motivate--the cornerback coming in on the blitz, the lineman dropping into coverage, or the safety covering the deep zone?" In most cases there are no wrong answers to these questions; instead they serve to further hone your coaching profile and the attributes that make up that profile. These attributes include overall motivation, strategic ability, player evaluation, and work ethic, as well as specific ability in coaching certain positions. If you're a defensive-minded coach, you can expect your ratings to be higher for linebackers and defensive backs than for running backs and receivers.

After you've completed the interview process, it's time to pick a team. You'll typically have several offers on the table from which to choose, and those offers will include a high-level overview of the team's current status--budget and available cap room, star players, and your contract and salary terms and ownership expectations.

As you might expect, owners play a pretty big role in Head Coach's gameplay. You'll be interacting with your owner on a regular basis as he lays out his detailed expectations of you and of the team as a whole. In our play time with the game, we took control of the Chicago Bears and found the owner's expectations to be fairly in line with what any Bears fan wants from the team for the 2006 season--that is, more protection for the quarterback, a more efficient passing game, and (of course) to win the division.

Being the boss in Head Coach means you'll have a lot on your plate every day, whether during the regular season, postseason, or off-season. The game's career mode starts the day after the Super Bowl ends, and you'll be thrown into the fire right away as you attempt to build a flailing team into a championship contender or keep a perennial playoff squad at the top of its game. Day-to-day activities in the off-season include fielding calls from players and agents, talking trades with other teams, preparing for the NFL Draft in April, holding practices for the team, and attending regular meetings with your coaching staff.