THE GREATEST SEASONS · FIELD GUIDE

Your sideline companion.

Football from every era, played on one shared field. Start with Coach Mode: your decisions shape the game while the players handle the movement.

Call a play

On offense, choose Run, Pass, Clock, or Special. On defense, choose a front and coverage. A hover preview on desktop sketches offensive routes or lanes. Each snap uses an 11-player offense and an 11-player defense. The simulation resolves movement, blocking, open receivers, ball flight, catches, pursuit and contact; it does not roll a yardage result and animate toward it.

Action Mode

Switch between plays using the control selector above the field. The direction of offensive play is always normalized left to right for readability; this camera convention is independent of which team is home. Kick and turnover returns run toward the left. The highlighted ring identifies the ball carrier, and a blue ring marks your selected defender.

With assistance enabled, leaving the directions alone follows the called run or pocket behavior and throws at the play's normal timing. Manual movement changes the actual path. Turning assistance off keeps the controlled player nearly stationary until you move. Passing beyond the line of scrimmage is penalized. Quarterbacks who cross the line become runners.

Clock and game management

Relaxed Play Clock allows unlimited decision time; it does not remove the game clock. When that clock is running, the next snap uses a 3-second hurry-up, 14-second normal huddle, or 38-second clock-chewing huddle. Run Clock advances that interval without snapping. Timeout stops the game clock and costs one timeout. A spike uses a down to stop it; a kneel loses a yard and leaves it running.

Turn Relaxed off for a live decision clock. Local decision time then advances live without an additional automatic huddle. The displayed play clock uses 40 seconds after ordinary plays and 25 seconds after administrative stoppages. Delay of game costs five yards, limited by half the distance. Handoff screens, local dialogs, pausing and a hidden local tab stop the decision clock. Private online games always wait between decisions and use a normal 14-second huddle.

Three timeouts are available per half. Halftime resets them. Regular-season overtime grants two; postseason overtime grants three per two overtime periods. The computer uses situation-aware plays, changes pace, and can call defensive timeouts late in a local game. Difficulty changes play selection, while ratings and physical probabilities stay the same.

Penalty decisions

When a live foul offers a decision, the completed play stays visible as a provisional result over the field. Review both outcomes before choosing Accept penalty or Decline penalty. The review shows actual enforcement yardage, possession, ball position, down and distance, scores, turnovers and period transitions using the same rules as the official decision. Scroll the comparison on a phone; both buttons remain available. No new play or clock action is allowed until the decision is resolved. Normal phone controls return afterward.

Detailed conditional preview speech uses a suitable installed local natural voice if available. Otherwise the full written comparison and existing packaged flag calls remain available. Voice settings are unchanged. Automatic fouls retain their existing ruling and do not offer an invented acceptance choice.

Scoring and implemented rules

Four downs to gain ten yards; reaching the goal line scores six. After a touchdown, choose a one-point kick from the modern extra-point distance or a two-point slant from the two-yard line. A defensive return on a conversion scores two for the defending team. Conversion plays are excluded from ordinary passing and rushing totals. Field goals score three; safeties award two to the defense and require a free kick from the 20.

The engine handles completions, incompletions, sacks, scrambles, interceptions and returns, fumble recoveries and returns, turnover on downs, punt returns, fair catches, kickoff returns, touchbacks and declared onside kicks. Fair Catch / Touchback on receiving defense takes a touchback if the ball reaches the end zone, otherwise a fair catch at the landing spot. Direct kickoff touchbacks go to the 35; punt, interception and safety-kick touchbacks go to the 20. Onside kicks can be declared in any quarter.

Generated fouls include false start, offside, offensive holding, defensive holding, defensive pass interference and unnecessary roughness. Accepted holding is assessed from the modeled previous spot; pass interference is enforced at the modeled foul spot, capped at the one-yard line. Ordinary distance penalties use half the distance near the goal. Defensive holding, interference and unnecessary roughness grant an automatic first down. Other live fouls repeat the down unless the enforced yardage earns a first down. The non-offending coach decides acceptance. False starts and delay of game are dead-ball five-yard penalties. An illegal forward pass beyond the line costs five yards from the spot and a down.

First-to-second and third-to-fourth quarter changes preserve the drive. Halftime starts a new kickoff with the opposite receiving team. Two-minute warnings stop the clock in the applicable periods. A live play finishes after time expires. An accepted defensive foul at the end of a period preserves an untimed down. The final whistle disables further play.

Overtime

Regular-season overtime lasts at most ten minutes and may end tied. Both teams have an opportunity to possess, subject to that clock limit. An opening touchdown does not immediately win. After a scoreless first possession, or after both opportunities have produced a tie, the next score wins. A defensive touchdown or qualifying safety can end it immediately. Postseason overtime uses successive 15-minute periods until a winner, preserving an unfinished drive and the required opportunity across periods. A team answering a touchdown may choose the extra point or a two-point attempt.

Same-device and private online play

Same device: defense chooses privately first, then offense. Coach Mode resolves immediately after both calls. In Action Mode, defense records a private rehearsal and offense records a second rehearsal against those controls. The official result merges both recordings. Huddles are charged once.

Online: create a private room and share its six-character code. The other coach chooses Join Room. Keep the original browser/device for reconnecting: a private key is saved locally, without an account. The two calls remain hidden until both lock. With Coach controls, the server calculates the result directly. If either coach selects Action controls, calls lock first, then each Action coach records a private rehearsal. The server validates the input limits, re-simulates both recordings, and returns the official score, state and replay. A Coach participant supplies automatic movement. This is asynchronous head-to-head football rather than simultaneous live streaming.

Waiting does not forfeit. Rooms expire seven days after the last game action. Reconnect on the same device to resume. Online play needs the installed Classic ASP endpoint and SQL Server database. Solo, local multiplayer, practice, tutorials, leagues and tournaments need neither. Browser export creates a local practice copy of an online position; it does not alter the room.

Seasons and tournaments

The league uses all 32 franchises, each with its selected historical team, in a generated 17-week round-robin rotation: 272 regular-season matchups, with no repeated opponent or bye in that fictional schedule. Play your franchise's game or simulate the remaining week. All simulated games use the competition's selected quarter length. Seven teams from each conference qualify: four division winners and three wild cards. The top seed receives a first-round bye; divisional matchups reseed. Conference champions meet in the championship.

Standings order uses wins plus half ties, then point differential, points scored and franchise index. This intentionally disclosed fictional competition tiebreaker is simpler than the official NFL sequence. Statistics aggregate both played and simulated matchups, with regular-season and postseason player totals shown separately. Regular-season standings remain fixed during the playoffs. Tournament mode supports seeded fields of 8, 16 or 32 teams and always retains your chosen franchise. All knockout games use postseason overtime. Season player statistics are available from the league office.

Saves, audio and accessibility

Names, settings, games and competitions save in this browser. Resume Saved Game or Resume League / Tournament continues progress. Export Save downloads a JSON backup; Import Save restores it. Keep a backup before clearing browser storage. Only one local game and one competition are retained at a time.

Music and field effects are synthesized locally. Narration uses 791 packaged American English neural speech clips, including complete event clauses and every historical team introduction. No speech service or account is used during play. Settings provides a voice sample, narration switch, volume, and Repeat Last Call; phones also have Voice and Repeat buttons. New profiles enable narration; existing preferences are preserved. Custom coach names use a deliberately selected installed local natural American English voice when available. Otherwise the announcer says “coach”; fixed calls use the packaged voice.

Speech is queued and never overlaps. Captions follow each spoken clause; related results and down-and-distance share an announcement. Essential calls finish before the next snap; the decision clock pauses during speech. Turning voice off releases the waiting turn immediately. Audio errors and watchdog timeouts also release the queue. Background music and crowd effects are lowered during announcements. Polls, reconnects, restored logs and visual replays do not repeat completed announcements. Click or tap before expecting audio; browser autoplay restrictions can prevent sound until a user gesture.

On phones, a fitted screen keeps the field at the top with the scoreboard, timeout controls, current caption, playbook and navigation beneath it. Landscape uses the field at upper left and controls at right. Playbook arrows page through every call. Live Action touch controls replace the playbook while the play runs. More opens statistics, personnel, competition, pace, clock management, saves and the clubhouse. Settings and other secondary panels scroll internally when necessary; the active game page stays fixed. Long captions page automatically and advance when tapped. Setup uses three short steps with internally scrollable content on very short screens. Browser-bar changes and rotation resize the layout without a reload. Fullscreen is optional.

The desktop arrangement is preserved. Reduced Motion disables weather movement and camera smoothing. Coach speed accelerates animation without changing results. Keyboard controls and visible focus indicators remain available. Canvas action also has a text result and box score.

Historical identity

Each franchise has one editorially selected completed season. Names and season facts have sources; gameplay ratings are estimates. Ratings are normalized against historical scoring environments, then adjusted for documented unit strengths and tendencies. They influence blocking, running speed and power, passing, coverage, tackling, ball security, kicking, punting and returns. Personnel changes use conservative estimated depth adjustments. No team is guaranteed to win. See the full selections and rating methodology.